


Haunted By the Ghost of You

by angsty_nerd



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Post Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2020-10-20 09:35:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 34,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20673194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angsty_nerd/pseuds/angsty_nerd
Summary: After much more time in stasis in the Pod than what Isobel experienced in Season 1, Max emerges from the pod in a similar state as when they were kids.“Naked, mute, no rudimentary skills...”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from Lord Huron's The Night We Met, which is beautiful if you don't mind getting your heart ripped out of your chest and stomped all over...repeatedly.
> 
> This is a continuation of the same post-Season 1 fic verse as Fallen Back to Earth, my Rosa POV one-shot, which you can find here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19158352  
Although you don’t necessarily need to know it much. Minor plot points and references only.
> 
> Admittedly unbetaed, although I will admit to having gone through it about 10 times in the past 3 days, so hopefully I caught the big things? If you see a mess, please tell me!

~*~*~*~*~ _ Liz _~*~*~*~*~

Nothing about that particular Tuesday morning seemed different or special. Liz woke before the dawn, slipping from his bed in the darkness. For the first few weeks, waking up alone in Max's bed was disorienting for her. His room smelled like him, and it made her heart ache in that brief, weak moment between sleep and awake when it was hard to distinguish between dreams and reality. But then those weeks turned into months. Months of living in a house full of memories of him, and now it was just part of her life. The constant reminder of what she lost was just part of her normal daily routine.

Like every other day, Liz dressed quietly in the dark, with only the light of the last glowing embers in the adobe fireplace to light her way. Then she slipped from the room, treading lightly as she passed the door to what used to be Max’s guest room. Rosa seemed to be sleeping soundly these days, but for months she was haunted by nightmares of dying. More nights than Liz could count, she had woken in the middle of the night to her sister crying...or calling out for help. Now that Rosa finally seemed to rest easier, Liz did everything in her power to keep from waking her sister. Any noise could disrupt a light sleeper like Rosa. 

With a practiced ease, she navigated his house sightlessly and as quietly as possible. She gathered her belongings for work, before pouring a travel cup full of hot coffee, and grabbing a protein bar for breakfast. She was out the door and in her car in about 20 minutes flat.

The dawn was just beginning to break, light creeping into the horizon as she drove out to the old turquoise mines, to the place where on one bright morning as the sun rose, she gave in to her feelings and kissed Max Evans for the first time. 

That morning felt like a lifetime ago, a different universe from the world she lived in today, even though it was only a few months earlier. It wasn’t perfect, but that was kind of the point. Liz had forgiven Max for his misdeeds, and Max loved her flaws and all. Rosa was dead and Isobel was dying, trapped in stasis in her pod. And Noah was still alive and free to roam, to murder, to manipulate as much as he wanted. 

But when Liz thought back to that morning, what she remembered was Max’s arms, holding her close to him. She remembered wanting to cling to him so much that as they kissed, she gripped his shirt in her fist, because maybe if she held onto him as tightly as she could, the moment would never end. She remembered how she couldn’t stop smiling, and how he was glowing, like all of his dreams had come true, because they probably had; he had been waiting his entire life for that kiss.

But that was before everything changed.

Now Max was the one who lay in stasis in his pod, day in and day out, with no signs of improvement.

For four months now, this had been her routine. She, Michael, and Isobel each had their shifts with him. Michael and Isobel left the cave to her in the early mornings and evenings. That gave her the full work day in the lab to conduct her research — a full 8 hour work day focused on her human job to maintain access to the hospital's laboratory; and then as many additional hours as she could manage to continue her alien studies, trying to find a way to bring Max back. Meanwhile, since neither Michael or Isobel had traditional 9-to-5 jobs, they would spend time with Max during the day while Liz worked.

Still, four months had passed and there had been no change in his condition, no matter what they tried. He had been given acetone shots, the antidote to her serum in various doses and concentrations. She and Michael had tried to develop some new compounds in the lab, hoping that they’d strengthen his electromagnetic energy. No matter how they tried to breathe some life back into Max, nothing worked. At this point she and Michael were running out of new ideas of ways to try to coax him out of his self-inflicted coma. 

They had Kyle come in to check his vitals weekly, but Max’s medical outputs had remained consistently negative. If they relied on human science to regulate him, he’d long have been declared dead. But Isobel managed to successfully enter his mind each time that she tried, and she insisted that he was still alive. She claimed to see incremental improvements in his mindscape, small as they may be. But whatever was happening to Max on the inside never once showed on the surface. He still appeared completely lifeless to Liz. 

Which is why Liz froze in place, startled, when she walked into the cave that Tuesday morning to discover that without warning, everything had changed.

As always, her eyes went straight to his pod to visibly check on Max. Normally she would walk over to him, place her hand on top of his pod, and say hello to him first thing, sometimes even pressing a light kiss to the membrane over his forehead. She would typically then settle down in the lawn chair to drink her coffee, eat her breakfast, and tell him about whatever she did after she left the cave the night before. 

But when she walked in that morning, pausing to let her eyes adjust to the dim light of the cave, she immediately knew something was wrong.

Max's pod was empty. 

A quick, frantic scan of the cave and she found him. He was sitting in the far corner of the cave, hugging his knees to his chest, completely naked, and shivering violently. 

“Max…” she gasped, as she hurried over to him.

He didn’t react to her voice, his face was buried in his arms so all she could see was the wild, unkempt curls of his hair. Liz pulled off the jacket that she was wearing — Max’s leather jacket — and wrapped it around his naked shoulders. Only then did he finally look up, their eyes meeting.

“Hi,” she said to him softly. He was silent, and there was uncertainty, and a little bit of fear in his eyes. Liz remembered how confused Isobel was when she first came out of the pod after six weeks. Max had been in stasis for four months, which was significantly longer. There was no telling how similar or different his reaction to the stasis would be compared to hers.

“Do you remember me?” She asked, since Max asked Isobel the same thing when she emerged from the pod. Liz waited for the flash of recognition that was only slightly delayed for Isobel as she recentered herself. It didn’t come. Max pulled the jacket around him to cover as much of himself as possible, but he continued to convulse from the cold air, and his eyes watched her with a weariness and mistrust that left Liz feeling off-balance. 

Looking for a way to comfort him further, she reached out to rub his shoulders, hoping it would help warm him. He immediately stiffened at her touch, like he was flinching away from her. 

She pulled her hands away and took a step backwards. "I'm sorry." 

He still didn't respond. Max just kept silently staring at her, the fear deepening in his eyes. He stayed sitting in that fetal position, but kept pulling his jacket tighter around him for warmth. _ Or was it his armor? Was he looking for protection? From her. _

“I have clothes for you in my car." Liz told him, mentally cursing at how uncomfortable her own voice suddenly sounded. "I’ll go get them. And I’ll call Isobel. She’ll be thrilled to hear that you’re awake.”

Liz bit down on the instinct to run away, tears stinging her eyes as she forced herself to walk calmly from the cave. She was prepared for Max to be disoriented after months of stasis, but she hadn’t expected his fear. Max was never afraid of her before. Cautious and weary, certainly, when he first revealed his secret to her, but he didn't once shy away from her. 

She could only remember one other time that he had ever flinched away when she tried to touch him...that horrible evening in the diner, during the blackout. The night when she had admitted to telling Kyle his secret. The night that he confronted her about her feelings, while she pleaded with him to come clean since he was so obviously lying to her. The night where she told him that her feelings for him terrified her. She wondered if he understood that they didn’t anymore?

Once out of the cave, she started making phone calls. Isobel was not awake yet when Liz called her to tell her the news. Her voice was groggy, but it quickly jumped to life when Liz told her that Max was awake. “Call Michael and get down here,” Liz insisted. “Something’s not quite right with him. He needs you.” 

She hung up the phone and hit the button to pop her trunk. But before grabbing the duffle bag that she had stashed in her car months earlier, just in case Max woke up, she slumped back, leaning heavily on her car, a shaky breath escaping from her lips as she let the relief rush through her for the first time.

_ Max is awake. He’s finally awake. _

No matter how much his behavior in the cave worried her, she was still grateful to see him out of the pod. _ Alive_… She sat there on the bed of her trunk, reassessing her brief interaction with him, trying to figure out what to make of it. He was borderline feral. Noticeably afraid of her. Silent. Confused. 

But he was awake and this thing was finally going to be over. Maybe now she could finally get used to this new normal...a world with _ both _ Max and Rosa, alive and part of her life. 

A life where the guilt over what he did for her wouldn’t be constantly chewing her apart.

~*~*~*~*~ _ Max _~*~*~*~*~

Everything was confusing and nothing made sense to him.

The world just_ felt _ wrong. 

It started when he emerged from stasis, slipping from his pod to find himself in the cave -- naked, cold, and alone. He didn’t know what to do or where to go. He could distantly feel the presence of others. It was a whisper at best, the lightest touch of a familiar presence, barely even noticeable. But if he could feel them, maybe they could feel him, so he decided to wait.

Hours passed -- cold, miserable hours -- and then _ she _ showed up. There was something about her...a strange feeling of comfort filled him at the sight of her that he didn’t quite understand. He reached out to her mind, but there was a blank silence there that felt wrong and scared him. She was not like him. She wasn’t the presence he was waiting to come for him. She was something else.

But she gave him something to make him warmer, which helped. Her mind was closed though, and without connecting he didn’t know how to thank her. 

When she touched his shoulders, it was unexpected. He tensed his muscles, because he wasn't expecting the familiarity from her. He was unsure how to react or what to do. She quickly pulled back at his reaction, like he had burned her.

She didn’t seem to feel him reaching out, calling out, at all._ What is happening? _ _ Where am I? _ His mind was screaming out, begging for answers. But her mind remained a blank, dark wall that he couldn't penetrate. She couldn't hear the questions, so the only response was silence.

But, then she spoke..._ out loud _… Her voice was soft and gentle, but her words were in a language that he didn’t understand. She turned and walked out of the cave, and he was suddenly alone again, still confused, but at least he was a little less cold. He pulled the warm layer tighter around his body and tried to disappear into it. 

She returned after a few minutes, handing him a bag and saying more unfamiliar words out loud. He took the bag, and opened it to find clothes inside. He pulled them out and examined them. They seemed to be the right size for him. And there were socks and boots as well. He looked back up to her, but she was heading out of the cave again. His eyes followed her until she was out of sight, and then he slid the jacket from his shoulders and started dressing himself. Everything fit perfectly, even the shoes.

Once dressed, he looked towards the cave exit with trepidation. The cave felt safe. At least in this dark space, lit by the glowing light of the pods, there were a few things that felt familiar. He had no idea what was outside, other than her; the strange girl who was kind to him, but who he couldn’t understand. 

He was thirsty, though, and his stomach growled. Looking around, there didn’t seem to be anything in the cave to help, so he pushed himself forward and stepped out of the cave, wincing as the bright sunlight pierced his eyes. He squinted, trying to adjust to the glaring sunshine. It took some time. When his vision finally cleared enough, he could see her sitting on the back of a vehicle down the hill a little way from the cave. She was watching him. 

He stood there, frozen, their eyes locked even with the vast space between them. Again, he reached out with his mind and tried to connect with her. _ God, how he wanted to connect with her… _ Again, there was only silence, and it felt like a stab in his gut. 

He ripped his gaze from hers and surveyed the landscape. It was beautiful. Dry, but lush. Brilliant blue skies with amazing streaks of white clouds meeting mountains on the horizon. It felt peaceful to him. Somehow, almost as familiar as the pods, but in a completely different way. It was similar to how he felt when he looked at her...even though she was strange, he knew that she _ mattered _ and he desperately wished he could talk to her. This place felt like that too. Important and meaningful, even while it was foreign and strange. 

He crouched down and examined the ground beneath him, before eventually just picking up a rock and rubbing his fingers over it. He walked to the edge of the hillside, and threw it, watching as it sailed through the air and landed below. He could still feel the weight of her watching his every movement. Sighing, he dragged a hand through the scraggly mess of his hair, and headed down the path towards her. 

As he approached she spoke again. The sound of her voice was soothing, but the words themselves still remained a mystery that left him feeling uneasy. He leaned against her vehicle, near her, but not too close to her. She said something else. The tenor of her voice was starting to change. Instead of trying to soothe him, she was starting to sound worried? Afraid maybe? 

He was trying to think of a way to communicate with her, when a noise drew his attention away from her, and he looked up to see another vehicle approaching quickly, a cloud of dust trailing behind it. 

He reached out with his mind and almost crumpled with relief. The familiar distant whispers that he had sensed earlier were getting closer and stronger. They were coming for him. 

The vehicle had barely jerked to a stop, when the door flung open and a woman leapt from the driver seat and rushed towards him. She too yelled _ out loud _a single word, one that the other girl had also repeated a number of times. When she reached him she flung her arms tightly around him in a hug, and with that first touch he felt their connection spring strongly to life. He could feel love, relief, but also pain and sadness from her. He reached out to touch her mind with his and sent his relief and confusion, as well as the wave of questions that were plaguing him.

_ Where are we? Who am I? Who are you? Who is she? What is she? What happened to me? _

The other woman suddenly pulled back from the hug. Concern filled her eyes as she studied him carefully. He heard another voice say something, a male voice, and he looked past her to see the man that was like him. Rumpled clothes, curly hair, and also that familiar feeling. The woman answered the other man out loud, and then turned her attention back to him. She took his hand, and her mind responded, clumsily, like she wasn't used to communicating normally. 

_ Four months in pod healing… missed you. _ She gestured at the man, and at herself. _ Family. _

He turned to clasp hands with the man, to connect with him and try to figure out who his family was, where they were, what was happening to him. And the biggest question of all, who _ he _ was? 

The sound of tires on gravel distracted him momentarily, and he turned to see the strange girl’s vehicle, speeding off into the desert. He wondered briefly at her sudden departure, but then the connection with the man — his brother — clicked into place and his focus returned to reuniting with his family.


	2. Chapter 2

~*~*~*~*~  _ Liz  _ ~*~*~*~*~

Two weeks had passed since Max woke up, and Liz had no idea what was going on with him. 

That day, when he woke up, she hadn’t really been prepared for it. Not the way she should have been. The shock of him emerging from the pod on his own, without their prompting, had been so unexpected that she hadn’t prepared herself for the possibility that he might not be himself. Now, weeks later, she was frustrated when she remembered how she reacted that day. 

She had panicked. Liz could admit it now. She wasn’t expecting to be unable to get through to him. She wasn’t expecting him to be quite so disoriented, and certainly didn’t think he’d be terrified of her. Her failure had thrown her off-balance. Then to see his relief when Michael and Isobel arrived for him, because somehow he still knew them…it broke that last little bit of strength that was keeping her from running. She jumped in her car and drove away without even saying goodbye, tears streaming down her face. 

So she ran to science to clear her head. After an afternoon in the lab, recentering herself through the organized process of human scientific research, the logical side of her brain regained control over her emotional outburst and she realized how ridiculous she was. She had no reason to be hurt. Of course he knew his family. There could be a million reasons why Max was so detached from her - the only human that was present that morning. She owed it to him, after everything that he had done for her, to give him whatever he needed to heal and return to his normal life. 

So she gave them a few days. But impatience was killing her. 

She knew that Michael and Isobel would have taken him back to Isobel’s house after the cave, so about 4 days later, Liz decided to just show up over there and check in with them. When she arrived, there were no cars in the driveway, and nobody answered when she rang the bell.

After that she gave up on being patient and started to call and text them, trying to get any sort of update or information on what was happening. Both Isobel and Michael were less than forthcoming with her. More often than not, their phones went straight to voicemail, like they were shut off or had no reception. Occasionally she got a brief text response with no information. Just a short “ _ He’s fine _ .” or “ _ Nothing to worry about _ .”

The radio silence was driving her crazy. It was like the aliens had isolated themselves together, just the three of them, hidden away in some secret alien clubhouse. No humans allowed.

So she was left constantly wondering what was happening with Max, desperate to see him...to touch him. It had been two solid weeks since he woke up, and she still hadn’t even heard his voice. Plus, it didn’t help that she was constantly surrounded by memories of him, because, of course, since he was with Isobel, Liz and Rosa were still holed up together in Max’s house.

Now that two weeks had passed since Max woke up, Liz’s worry was starting to devolve into frustration. Her mind was racing through a ridiculously illogical pile of scenarios of what could be going on with him. She couldn’t really focus on anything else.

It was a quiet evening and Liz was on his couch, with one of his books in her hands. Rosa lay across the couch from her, sketch book in hand, idly drawing while humming a Sugar Ray song under her breath. Liz idly flipped pages, pretending to read, when the story that was really running through her mind involved incurable alien diseases that rendered Max unable to pick up the phone and tell her whether or not he was okay. She was so caught up in trying to science her way into an explanation for how such a disease would work that she didn’t notice Rosa falling silent and watching her with concern, until her sister spoke.

“Liz will you tell me about your relationship with Max?”

“_Por__ qué_?” Rosa’s question took Liz by surprise “We’ve had months to talk about it and you’ve never asked before.  _Y por qué _ _hoy_?”

“_No lo sé_...I guess I didn’t want to upset you before? You know, while Max was gone. But I was just thinking about him, and about how when I first came back, Kyle told me that you fought your feelings for him for a long time. What made you finally decide to give in?”

Liz closed her eyes, sighed, and remembered back to that time when she had first returned to Roswell. It had been almost a year now since that strange day when she drove back into her hometown for the first time in a decade. Almost a year since the night when Max pulled her over at an ICE inspection point disguised as a DWI checkpoint. Almost twelve whole months since the night that she was shot and Max saved her life. It felt like an eternity ago...so much had happened since that night and she changed so much as a person in just a year. Liz could barely relate to the person who ran from a boring life with a disappointing career and a generic fiance a year earlier. 

In some ways, it also felt like just yesterday that she returned to Roswell. The memories of those first days back in her hometown were vivid, fresh. She could clearly remember how it felt in those first few days to reconnect with Max as she learned the truth about him; to fall in love with him as he tried to make her understand why he would risk everything for her.

The harder part to for her to relate to now was the anger and mistrust that she felt after learning of Rosa’s murder. It was hard for her to understand the suspicion that she used to bury her feelings for Max back then. But even through her feelings of betrayal, it seemed like every time Max looked at her or touched her or basically opened his mouth to say anything to her at all — since it usually involved him pouring his heart out to her — she seemed to struggle to hold onto those negative feelings. Likely because deep down, even then, she knew that he was worth forgiving. She had wasted so much time that they could have spent together with misplaced accusations. 

“It was a complicated time,” Liz replied, trying to figure out how to explain it to her sister. 

“I get that,” Rosa pushed, “He saved your life and finally confessed his love to you, right? But then also you were investigating my murder and he was a suspect?”

“I think a part of me always knew he didn’t murder you, but at the time he was the only alien that I knew for certain had a power that could kill and could leave a handprint. All of my evidence pointed to him. We had no idea that any other aliens were even in Roswell at the time. And I could tell he was lying to me whenever I asked him about the night you died,” Liz explained, “Which made it impossible to trust him for a while.”

“So what did he do to change your mind? Did he confess all of his sins?”

“No, I figured the truth out on my own.” Liz thought back to the second night that Max saved her life, when he took a bullet for her at Grant Green’s warehouse. “I followed the clues and put just enough pieces together that he couldn’t lie anymore.”

“When I confronted him, he finally gave in and told me everything. I was so angry with him. He had just been shot trying to save my life,  _ again _ , and I shoved him. Hard. And told him I never wanted to see him again." She laughed bitterly at the memory. "God, now I can barely believe I'd ever say something like that. I want him back so badly."

Liz paused, carefully considering her next words before continuing. “The thing is, Rosa, I think the feelings might have been there all along, maybe even all the way back to high school. But after you died, I buried them along with everything else I loved about home. I shoved it all into a corner of my heart and locked the cage with no intention of ever opening it again. But when Max healed me that cage cracked, just a little. And once I learned the truth about how you died, suddenly all of the secrets that Max was keeping seemed to fade away. More and more little truths about that time kept coming out, and each one made it easier to understand Max and easier to eventually forgive him.”

“That’s the part I don’t really get, Liz. Nevermind that the guy is an alien, I’m still trying to wrap my head around that. But he thought his sister  _ murdered me, _ so he  _ covered it up _ , rather than, I don’t know, putting her in a loony bin? And now he’s a cop? _Yo no __entiendo_.”

“He loves his sister,” Liz replied simply. “I understand that. I would have done the same thing for you.”

“Ay, mija!” Rosa exclaimed, “But to fall in love with him?”

“I think that his guilt over what he did to you was all intermingled with how much he loved me all of these years. Those feelings fueled most of his life decisions, I think. When I first got back to Roswell, he told me that he was a cop because protecting people helped him sleep at night. I know he’s done everything he can to protect Papi all of these years. Max is…” Liz paused, trying to find the right words to make Rosa understand. “Max is a good person who did a bad thing in an impossible situation because he was scared for his family. And he’s been trying to make up for that black mark on his soul ever since, right up until the day that he sacrificed his life to bring you back to me.”

Liz paused, and took her sister’s hand, running her fingers over Rosa’s knuckles, and sliding them up to her sister’s wrist, feeling the soft skin beneath her fingers. Skin that should have been scarred with the remnants of her body being burned all of those years ago. 

The scars had been healed, cleansed. It was like it had never happened now.

“He’s made up for it all, Rosa,” Liz murmured. “How can I hold onto the sins of the past, when you’re right here in front of me. Max almost died because he wanted me to have my sister back, and frankly, if he had died I would be so angry with him. But you’re here, and he’s going to be here...once he gets back to normal. How can I be angry when I’m soon going to have everything I could possibly want?”

~*~*~*~*~  _ Max  _ ~*~*~*~*~

Max didn’t quite understand how time worked on this planet, but he knew that he had slept at least a dozen nights, if not more, since he woke up in the cave. He had lost count. His head still felt fuzzy, like he knew more was supposed to be there, but it was hidden away behind the clouds and he couldn’t seem to get to them. Unfortunately, nothing they had tried seemed to help at all.

He and his siblings spent most days underground, hidden away from the human world. He didn’t quite understand the purpose of the underground laboratory beneath his brother’s strange little home, but he knew that being down there surrounded by his family and various scraps of objects that felt like home made him feel a little bit less isolated in this place.

A little bit...even though the two of them spent most of their time talking to each other in the human language that he couldn’t understand.

He knew that something was going on that they weren’t telling him. He didn’t know what it was. It felt like was doing everything right. Their days underground were full of all sorts of experiments: physical tests to make sure he was healthy… those ones seemed to be going fine. The mental exams to try to kickstart his memories never went particularly well. But the tests that he excelled at were the tests of his special abilities. 

There was a whole litany of them, from the most simple channeling of electricity, pulling currents from one source to another, to turning on electric objects just with his mind. One day he mistakenly channeled so much electricity through himself and back out again, that he released it by mistake into the laboratory’s ladder and escape hatch, trapping them underground for hours while they waited for the currents to subside.

But his skill with electricity didn’t seem to phase his family nearly as much as the other tests he passed. He easily summoned large objects with his mind, juggling them over his head, and tossing them back into place, gently laying them down with no issues. He slipped into his sister’s mindscape once, briefly, just to show her that he could do so, but he quickly left, not wanting to invade her privacy. And one day, when his sister mistakenly sliced her hand open on a piece of scrap metal, Max gently healed the cut with a touch of his hand.

During a series of his brother’s experiments, his sister mistakenly knocked over a flask of some sort of goop that was key to the study. While they argued in frantic voices, he moulded the glass back together with his mind, pulling the goop back up from where it had spilled and returning it to the flask, all without lifting a finger. When they realized what he had done, they just stared at him for a long time, making soft, foreign comments to each other that he wished he could understand.

That evening once they were alone, he placed a hesitant hand on his sister’s shoulder and slipped into their connection.

_ Did I do something wrong today? You seemed worried. _

She looked at him, narrowing her eyes, as she tried to focus on the connection. This form of communication was still hard for her.

_ Not worried. Surprised. Powers strong. We never... _

Between her words, and the feeling of awe he felt rushing through the connection, he suddenly understood.  _ What I did in the lab today...you can’t do that. _ His sister nodded.  _ And I couldn’t do it before either.  _ She nodded again. 

_ Pod changed you.  _ She explained.  _ More than memory. Your instincts reset. Like, more alien now. _

He paused and pondered over what she said for a moment, frustrated at their stilted communication. He wanted to know more about what he was like before the pod. If he was different, he wanted to understand it. He wanted to know what they had seen him do that was so shocking and different. He assumed that before the pod he communicated similar to his family, speaking this planet’s language. But what else about him had changed? What did the pod  _ do _ to him?


	3. Chapter 3

~*~*~*~*~ _ Liz _~*~*~*~*~

She felt him before she saw him.

She had just delivered a plate of crater tots to a booth of high school kids, when she suddenly paused and pressed a hand to her heart with a smile. Max was here. She turned to the door, hoping to see him walk in and smile at her, the way he always used to...but when the bell rang it was Isobel instead of Max who entered the restaurant. 

Liz didn't even need to glance out the window to know that Max was outside waiting in the car. Meanwhile her father was helping Isobel at the register with her take out order, which gave Liz an opportunity. She slipped behind the counter and quickly whipped together Max's favorite shake, just the way he always liked it. While the shake blended she basked in the feeling of his nearness. She hadn’t expected to feel the connection like this, after all of this time apart, and she wondered how it could possibly still be there? It was almost five months ago that she and Max had made love for the first time, when he had bonded their minds together at her insistence. Only a few hours later on the same day she felt what she thought was Max dying through that same connection. Since then there had been nothing, or at least she couldn’t recall feeling him until now.

She never questioned why the handprint didn’t appear. Max was gone; his mind deep in some form of hibernation as he healed. Why would the handprint appear when his mind wasn’t active to bond to hers? Since then, there was just this emptiness inside of her that she could never fully explain. She had blamed it on the deep heartbreak she felt at losing Max so suddenly. But now, just having him close by, Liz’s heart and mind were full of him. She found herself wondering if that emptiness had been something more…if it was the place inside of her that he was supposed to be filling. Maybe instead of the bond not being able to form, it formed but couldn’t fully manifest? And maybe without fully manifesting it hadn’t ever faded away?

Liz tried to recall how she felt when she found Max awake in the cave, but everything was just so overwhelming that day. She couldn’t really recall how she felt. All she knew now was, feeling him nearby after weeks of wondering what was happening with him left her desperately needing to see him.

Wiping her hands clean after finishing the shake, Liz checked to be sure that her Papi was still chatting away at Isobel. He had her fully absorbed in whatever story he was telling, which gave Liz the perfect opportunity to slip from the restaurant unnoticed. 

She paused just in front of the Crashdown door, hesitant and almost a little afraid. In the entire four months that she waited for Max to wake up, never once did it occur to her that _ her _ Max might not come back. The feral, alien stranger who emerged from the pod a few weeks earlier looked like Max, but he flinched when she touched him. When he looked at her, she saw no warmth. And in the weeks that he had been out of the pod, he hadn’t once tried to see her.

Max waking up as a different person broke her heart.

She knew that her Max had to still be in there somewhere, buried deep down inside. Four months in the pod seemed to have locked up his heart and mind in a steel prison, where there was still time to serve for the crime of bringing Rosa back from the dead. 

Or maybe he just needed a little help to find his way back to himself.

She tightened her grip around the door handle and pushed her way out to the street, a smile forced onto her face as she approached Isobel’s SUV, where Max sat in the passenger seat with the window down.

“Brought you a milkshake!” She greeted him enthusiastically. “It’s your favorite! Or, it used to be. Little green man with whipped cream and two cherries. I used to make them for you all the time back in high school.”

There was a brief flash of recognition when he first saw her, but he quickly furrowed his brow. Was that confusion? Frustration? Liz wasn’t quite sure. She smiled with what she hoped was reassurance and tilted the drink a little closer to him, gesturing for him to take it. He did, and with another gesture of encouragement from her, took a sip from the straw. He gave her a small smile and took another sip. 

It felt like at least a little bit of progress. He didn't seem afraid of her anymore. Hopefully if she continued to show him little acts of kindness he would eventually understand that it was because she cared about him.

Before she could try to get further with him though, Isobel emerged from the Crashdown, take out bags in her hand. She froze when she saw Liz leaning against the side of her car.

"Liz," Isobel greeted her.

"How is he doing, Isobel?" Liz knew it was a little rude to jump straight past the social niceties and get to the point.

"Not much progress." Isobel admitted. "He doesn't remember anything, yet. He isn't speaking or reading or communicating by any human means. Although his powers are strong."

"Isn’t that how you all were when you originally came out of the pods?" 

"Yeah," Isobel confirmed. "He can only communicate by connecting psychically to Michael and I. But we have been living as humans for so long, it's like he's fluent in a foreign language that we're just beginning to learn."

Liz nodded, "That sounds hard. Poor Max. He's probably feeling so alone." Liz bit her lower lip, mind racing as she looked back to Max, sitting in the car. He was watching them talk, while sipping on his milkshake.

“We’ve been spending most of our time down in Michael’s bunker trying to figure out what’s wrong with him, but we’re running out of ideas.” Isobel admitted.

"I know I can't do much to help, Isobel. And I know he doesn't know me right now. But I want to do something… can I just come visit him occasionally? Maybe sit with him so that you can run errands or get out now and then? Maybe just having me around a little more could help trigger something from him."

"Sure." Isobel agreed. "I think he’d like that, even if he doesn’t know it. And yeah, I do have some things I’ve been putting off dealing with. I’m afraid to leave him alone like this.

“I could spend the day with him on Saturday… then you can have a full day off to do whatever you need to do. Would that work?”

Isobel agreed and they set a quick plan, before Liz headed back into the Crashdown, feeling lighter than she had in days. Saturday was just a few days away, and she couldn’t wait to spend it with Max.

  


~*~*~*~*~ _ Max _~*~*~*~*~

He watched the two women as they spoke, clearly about him, while idly sipping on the drink that she brought him. The human girl fascinated him. Something about the sight of her made his stomach flip flop and his palms sweaty. He didn’t really understand the reaction or any of the other feelings bubbling up inside him when he looked at her. All he knew was that he wanted to know more about her.

He could sense that his sister was uncomfortable with the other woman. There was a nervousness emanating from her that surprised him, since his sister had projected nothing but strength since he went home with her from his pod. There was also a touch of guilt filtering through their connection. 

Trying to interpret his sister’s feelings through their connection was the clearest form of communication between them so far. She struggled to communicate with him psychically. They exchanged a few words throughout the day, but they were stilted, fragmented. His family had been living their lives as humans for so long that they were out of touch with his only mode of communication.

It was strange for him. He felt the bond between them all strongly through their connection. But, yet, he felt like he had no one to talk to. He felt isolated and alone, even though his sister was never far from his side. 

Something was just missing.

The human girl turned to go back inside, with just a last glance and a smile back in his direction. As she walked away for the faintest moment he thought he could feel a connection with her. What was she feeling? Was it...hope? He shook his head and quickly pushed the thought away. It was impossible. His own wishful thinking. He was too damn desperate to connect with someone else...anyone else.

His sister slid into the driver's seat, so he turned to her, touching her shoulder gently to fully connect. _ Who is she? _ He asked. It was a question that had been on his mind ever since that first morning in the cave. He could feel his sister’s uncertainty as she sought an answer for him. Finally she just replied with a single word. _ Liz. _

_ Liz _ … he thought to himself, breaking the connection with his sister so that she could focus on driving them home. _ Liz… _ Her name, he assumed. He let the name settle in his mind, to see if it was a comfortable sensation. Something about it...about her… about _ Liz _… felt natural in his mind. 

He took another sip from the drink she brought him, clearly a simple gesture from her since she seemed to already know what he liked. She knew him better than he knew himself. That day in the cave, she was the one who had clothes for him, clearly his own clothes, since they fit perfectly. She was ready and waiting for him to emerge from the pod. 

He considered her kind eyes, and the way she smiled at him when she spoke to him, even though she knew he didn’t understand. Maybe she was the missing link to his memories? Could she be all that stood between him and figuring out who he was? There must have been a reason that she was the first person to find him in the cave rather than one of his siblings. 

A sudden sense of determination rushed into him. He needed to learn how to communicate with humans. So that he could communicate with _ Liz_. He needed to figure out who he used to be, what happened to him in the pod, and how much he changed. And maybe, if he was lucky, his memories would eventually return. And if he could remember his life, then maybe he could also understand the strange feeling that curled around inside his gut whenever he thought about Liz.

~*~*~*~*~ _Liz_ _~*~_*~*~*~

“I saw Max today.” Liz told her sister as they washed the dishes together after dinner that night.

“Oh?” Rosa’s response was too nonchalant, like she was clearly trying not to make a big deal about it. “And?”

“No change, really. He’s still not speaking. His memory hasn’t come back. Isobel said that he’s been trying to communicate with them telepathically, but she and Michael aren’t very good at it. Until he can speak they still have to keep him hidden. I think he’s kind of lonely.”

“Liz.” Rosa’s eyes were sharp and her voice was firm. “I really don’t care how he’s doing. Are _ you _ okay?”

“It was really good to see him,” Liz insisted, but her cheerful voice sounded fake even to her own ears, and it certainly didn’t sneak by her sister.

“Elizabeth!” Rosa pressed insistently.

“I don’t know.” Liz admitted with a sigh. She paused for a moment and tried to find the right words to explain how it felt. “You know, Max and I have been friends all his life, and all that time he was secretly in love with me, and I was clueless about it. But once he admitted his feelings to me, I could see it, and it was a familiar thing. Every time he looked at me, all our lives, his eyes just projected how much he adored me. But when he woke up in the cave he looked at me like I was a stranger. And it broke my heart almost as much as his four month absence.”

Liz put down the towel in her hands and leaned back against the kitchen counter, silently surveying the room around them as she tried to collect her thoughts. But as she looked around, all she could see was him. They were standing in Max’s kitchen. And over there, across the room was bookshelves full of old musty books that Max cherished. It felt like an eternity ago that he lifted her up onto the ledge beneath the shelves as they frantically kissed, only pausing for her to rip her tank top off over her head. His eyes burned in that moment with desire that Liz knew must have been mirrored in her own eyes. 

She would have never guessed in that moment, when Max was happiest she had seen him since high school, that only a few hours later he’d be gone. Ripped away by those same feelings of devotion for her.

“You know, Rosa, physically he’s back. I can see that it’s Max. He looks the same. He smells the same. He has the same shy smile, and the same furrowed brow when he’s confused. All of those familiar things that I know are a part of Max Evans are there. But it’s not him. Not really. It’s your mind that makes you who you are, right?” Rosa looked uncertain, so Liz tried to explain further. “Your personality is what makes you unique, and what creates your personality? Memory. Life experience. How you respond and react to the world around you. Your upbringing; how you were nurtured as a child...Max is just missing all of that right now. Which makes him just feel very...alien.”

“He _ is _ an alien, Liz,” Rosa pointed out with a wry smile.

“I know,” Liz exclaimed with a terse laugh, “But he’s never felt like one before. To me, he’s always just been the guy I grew up with. My friend, Max Evans. The boy that’s always loved me. And I can’t help think now…maybe this is all just karma coming for me. Payback for all of the years that Max had to watch me date Kyle; that he waited for me to come home from college. Now he’s the one who gets to be clueless and I’m the one who has to do the whole unreciprocated love thing from afar.”

“Oh, mija!” Rosa sympathized, But Liz just powered on with a final statement.

“And let me just tell you. It sucks. My heart has never hurt like this before.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long delay. I won’t deny that I got a little sidetracked by the Fictober challenge so I haven’t been able to work on this lately. But I really didn’t want to go this long between updates, so I decided it’s past time for me to throw this out there. Again, apologies for the wait, and October’s more than half over, so this will return to #1 on my list very soon!

~*~*~*~*~ _ Max _~*~*~*~*~

They were eating dinner in silence, as always. It was easier than talking since talking required connecting, and connecting required touch. But he was determined to change the status quo, so he laid a gentle hand on his sister's shoulder and opened their connection.

_ Why aren't you trying to teach me to speak like a human? _

He felt her surprise at the question and then an overwhelming wave of guilt and apology emanating from her. He tried to make her feel better, projecting reassurance through their connection. He wasn't angry, after all. He just wanted to be capable of moving forward with his life.

His sister bit her lip and studied him, and he sensed that she was trying to figure out how to best explain, considering the limitations from their language barrier. After a moment's thought, she projected an image at him from her memories. It was the two of them as children, silently holding hands in the back seat of a car. He could feel her fear in the memory...and his own…because they were connected in the memory, just like they were connected right now.

_No speak… _She stumbled to say. _ We learn together. _

Another memory was pushed through the connection into his mind's eye. It was him, standing in front of a crowd of humans. His sister was wearing a white dress and was glowing with happiness. He was talking to the crowd, human language streaming from his mouth as his sister smiled, laughed, and eventually cried. He didn't understand the words he spoke in the memory, but from the love he could feel flooding through the connection, he understood that whatever it was meant a lot to his sister.

_ Your words special… _She explained. _ You were good. Better. Thought words be easy. _

And for the first time he began to understand. His sister hadn't tried to teach him language because she couldn't bear the thought of failure. She hoped everything would return on its own so that she wouldn't have to blame herself if he never got back to his former self. 

He sent another wave of comfort through the connection.

_ Please teach me to speak… _ He pleaded. _ I need to move on with my life. _ He pointed at himself. _ Who am I? _

She smiled, and spoke aloud, "Max."

He cleared his throat. It felt awkward to try to use his voice, but he pushed through and mimicked the sound that his sister made. "Max."

_ Easy… _She told him through the connection. 

_ What about you? _He asked.

_ Mine’s harder! _She laughed silently, before saying slowly out loud, "Isobel."

"Izzaboll?" He tried. From the look on her face, he knew that he botched it.

"Isobel." She prompted him again, pronouncing each sound separately and slowly for him.

"Isobel,” he repeated. She smiled when he got it right. 

Over the course of that evening, he and Isobel wandered the house as he pointed at objects and she told him their names. Some words felt natural on his tongue, while others were a struggle. It was a lot to take in over one evening, and he knew it would take time to learn an entire language. What mattered was the words that he needed stuck with him at the end of the night. His name, _ Max. Isobel and Michael _ , his family. _ Liz, _his...something. He still hadn't been able to bring himself to ask Isobel to explain her to him. Something about it felt wrong, like she wasn't the right person to ask. He needed to remember himself...or learn enough language that he could ask Liz himself.

The next few days were a mix of little victories and defeats. It seemed that Isobel and Michael were running out of tests to run on him, so their time in the bunker was lessening. When they were home, Isobel tried to help Max learn the human language. She even showed him how to work the TV, so that when she wasn’t around he could try to absorb new words by watching the stories there.

He was slowly learning to speak aloud, although his language was stilted and childish, not all that different from Isobel and Michael’s psychic communication skills. He was impatient to improve his speech, and also impatient to see Liz again so that he could show her what he had learned. _ For her. _But Isobel insisted that he should wait, that it still wasn’t safe for him to be out in public.

At least Isobel was starting to feel a little more comfortable with the idea of him being home alone. She still didn’t like leaving him for long, but with a promise that he would stay in the house, she was starting to do quick little errands for an hour or so now and then. It also helped that he had a task to absorb his attention now that he was studying the human language. 

It was during one such solo period, when he was sitting and trying to interpret a movie about a lost fish trying to find his way home, when suddenly there was a loud banging on the door. Max jumped to his feet, startled, and froze, staring at the front door, wondering who it was and if they’d go away. Moving very slowly, he hit the power button on the remote so that the room was silent, and listened for another sound.

After a moment the pounding repeated, insistently demanding his attention. Moving carefully to avoid any unnecessary sounds, he made his way to the front door and peeked through the little hole to see who was there. 

The small, slender, dark frame immediately caught his attention and he couldn’t open the door fast enough.

“LIZ!” He exclaimed, out loud, eager to show her that he knew her name now, that he could say it to her. But when she looked up and met his eyes, it was not Liz’s warmth and comfort that greeted him back. The eyes were sharp, blazing with heat. It wasn’t Liz at all. Just someone who looked a lot like her.

His disappointment must have shown on his face, because the woman rolled her eyes at him before sweeping past him and into the house. He closed the door and followed, unsure what else to do. 

“Max Evans,” the woman said, her eyes raging as she looked him up and down.

He could only nod, “Me.” He responded affirmatively. “Max.”

She said something he didn’t understand, her annoyance with him plain on her face, but he had no idea why. “What am I…...to do with you, Max?” She suddenly asked, taking a step towards him and poking him right in the chest with a sharp finger. “Huh? Liz keeps saying…...be fine, but is it really?”

“Liz?” He asked hopefully, grasping on the name that he's been clinging to, that drives him forward every day..

“Oh my God!” She threw up her hands and paced away from him, “You are…!” Another shouted word that he didn’t understand. “Yes, Liz. My sister. Who loves you, for some crazy reason. I can’t.....that even with no...you’re still so…...with her.” 

Fragments missing, and he knew they were probably important. Still, some new clues were coming through. This woman was Liz’s sister. She was angry with him, which likely meant he had done something to hurt Liz.

“Look, Max, I know you thought you were giving her what she wanted. And I’m….. really, I am. But losing you broke her. The only thing that kept her going was her……..into saving you. And now, it’s like you’re half back and half gone, and that’s killing her too! She…..better than this.”

Liz’s sister’s eyes narrowed on him once again and he felt like he was under a microscope for a moment. She took a step towards him, studying his face. “How much of this do you even……”

He knew she was trying to ask him something, but the fragments he was missing left him at a loss. He shook his head, not really sure what to say.

Apparently nothing was the wrong answer, because suddenly the anger flared back up in the woman, and she stepped closer to him and shoved him, hard. He staggered backwards, staring at her in shock.

“Don’t you…break her heart again, Max Evans, or I will end you.”

She turned and stalked angrily for the door, flinging it open. She paused in the doorway, her shoulders still stiff with anger, and he saw her heave she took a deep breath.

“Thank you for giving me my life back.” Her voice was quiet, measured. There was a long moment of silence as he wondered what she meant. Then she was gone and he was left alone with his questions left lingering in the empty air.

~*~*~*~*~_ Liz _~*~*~*~*~

Liz had been buzzing with nervous energy ever since she woke up on Saturday morning. It took every ounce of willpower in her not to just run straight to Isobel’s house when she woke up that morning, even though she wasn’t expected to show up until after lunchtime. She was such a tightly wound coil of barely contained excitement that finally Rosa got sick of her and kicked her out of the house. 

“_Ay, chica loca_! Get out of here!” Rosa exclaimed, throwing a pillow across the room at her. “Papi always needs help, if you need a distraction!”

Liz knew that her sister was right, so she changed into her waitress uniform and headed into town to help her father with the Saturday morning breakfast rush. It was the right move. She channeled her energy into refilling cups of coffee and delivering Saturn cakes to tables, and before she knew it, lunchtime was approaching. A quick lunch, another change of clothes, and finally she was off to spend the day with Max.

When she arrived at Isobel's house, Max was standing awkwardly in the hallway when Liz walked in. She smiled and waved hello silently at him, while Isobel talked quickly at Liz as she finished getting ready.

"Thank you so much for doing this, Liz. It's been hard holding Mom off from coming over here, and she just can't see Max yet. He's not ready for public yet, so just please, stay home, don't let him answer the door, just...protect him."

"Isobel. Of course I will." Liz told her firmly. "I've got this. You do what you need to do. Take as long as you need."

Isobel finally paused, turning to Liz as she wiggled her earrings into her ears. "Thank you. I'll be having a girls day with my mom. Hopefully it'll satisfy her for a while. If you need anything you know how to get ahold of me." 

Isobel suddenly laughed, glancing back and forth between Liz and Max. "God, I'm treating you like you're babysitting my big brother. This is absurd." Her voice broke around a laugh, and suddenly a sob choked out. Liz gasped and quickly hugged Isobel. "I just want him back so much." She told Liz, a tear slipping from her eye as she sniffled a bit. 

"I know. Me too." Liz told her. "Maybe I can help today. Let me work with him and see what I can do."

"Nothing has worked so far."

"I know. But my connection with him is just different than yours or Michael's. Maybe we need to stop trying to unlock his brain. Maybe appealing to his feelings will help. I can try at least."

After Isobel finally left, Liz turned her attention to Max, who was still just standing there watching her silently. Something had changed in the way he was looking at her since she last saw him. There was still a little confusion in his eyes, but it was warmer than before, like it was becoming more like curiosity. 

“Hi, Max,” she greeted him, taking a tentative step towards him. 

He smiled, “Liz.” She almost gasped at the familiar sound of her name on his lips. It made her heart jump. “Hello.” 

“Max, you’re talking!” 

“Just a little,” he explained with a sad shake of his head. “Isobel help. And TV. I…” he paused and looked a little frustrated, like he was trying to remember a word and couldn’t. He looked back at Liz, pointing at his ear. “I hear better.”

“You hear…” Liz repeated, trying to understand. “Oh! You mean you understand more than you can say?” Max nodded. “That’s really normal when you’re learning a language, Max. Don’t worry. I can already tell you’ve made great progress since I saw you last."

Liz paused for a moment, thinking back on their personal history in conjunction with what Max was telling her. "What about music?" She asked him. M"Has Isobel given you music to listen to as well?"

Max looked confused. "Mooz ick?" he asked awkwardly.

Liz chuckled and reached into her bag to pull out her phone and a set of ear buds. "Let me show you."

She scrolled through her music collection, trying it decide what track to play for him. She smiled and laughed when she passed Chumbawumba, smiled nostalgically and hesitated briefly as she considered Bright Eyes, but finally she decided to stick with a song that maybe wasn't loaded down with quite so much memory. She just wanted him to hear something beautiful. 

She passed him an ear bud and showed him how to slip it into his ear. He followed her lead, and once he was ready, Liz hit play and the lovely plucking of the guitar began. She met Max's eyes, held his gaze, warmth radiating between them as they listened to the song.

_ You were cold as the blood through your bones _

_ And the light which led us from our chosen homes _

_ I was lost _

_ And now I sleep _

_ Sleep the hours and that I can't weep _

_ When all I knew was steeped in blackened holes _

_ I was lost _

_ And I was still _

_ I was under your spell _

_ When I was told by Jesus all was well _

_ So all must be well _

_ Just give me time _

_ You know your desires and mine _

_ So wrap my flesh in ivy and in twine _

_ For I must be well _

_ Keep the Earth below my feet _

_ For all my sweat, my blood runs weak _

_ Let me learn from where I have been _

_ Well keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn _

_ keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn _

When the song ended, Max pulled the bud from his ear and handed it back to her. He smiled and nodded. "Good." He said.

"Music." Liz repeated. "See, hearing is such an important part of learning. Learning the language is most important, of course, but music also helps you learn the language of art, and feelings, and humanity."

Max ducked his head shyly and rubbed his neck. “Thanks. I learn for you, Liz.” He looked back up and met her eyes with a hesitant smile. 

“Oh, Max…” Liz's heart ached at his words, but they also confused her, after weeks of no contact, months of being alone. She took another step closer to him and reached for his hand. “How much do you know about me? What did Isobel and Michael tell you?” She threaded her fingers through his, hands palm to palm. Max audibly gasped at her touch. Liz’s eyes flew from their joined hands up to see the utter amazement that she felt from him reflected in his eyes. “What is it?”

“I can feel you,” Max gasped out in amazement. “Like Isobel and Michael. There was nothing, before… Now you’re…” He trailed off, unable to find the words.

“We’re connected,” Liz explained, bringing Max’s hand to her lips for a soft kiss. “You bonded us...just before you went into the pod. I can feel you too. It’s how I knew you were at the Crashdown the other night.”

“Bonded?” Max repeated, not fully understanding. So Liz places his hand on her chest, over her heart, in the spot where his handprint had joined their souls together not once, but twice. She closed her eyes, wishing that the powers went both ways so that she could show him her memories of their love. 

But when Liz opened her eyes, it was almost like the world around them had disappeared, and there was nothing left except her and Max, their hands joined over her heart. And suddenly it felt like he was inside of her mind as she _ felt _ moreso than _ heard _ him whisper, _ I didn’t even know it was possible to connect like this to a human. _

_ What do you mean? _

_ This is how my species communicates back home, I think. It’s how I am able to talk to Michael and Isobel. _

_ Psychically...I guess that makes sense. You never really used it before the pod. _

Max gave her a half smile. _ “I got that impression from how hard it is for Michael and Isobel to talk to me this way.” _

Liz looked at him quizzically. _ “But since the pod...it’s instinctive for you, isn’t it?” _

_ “Up until this week it was the only way I could communicate at all.” _

Liz reached up with her free hand and gently stroked Max's jawline. For the first time, it finally was beginning to feel like he was back, just a little.

_ I've really missed you. _

_ I'm sorry. _ He replied. _ I don't like thinking that I've hurt you in any way. _

Liz laughed out loud. _ Oh, Max… it's so much more complicated than that. _

Reluctantly, she pulled their joined hands from her heart. Immediately she felt the loss of him inside her mind and it was such a sudden loss after missing him for so long that she almost pulled his hand right back up to reestablish the bond. But she forced herself to move their day forward.

"So, we should probably continue your language lessons," Liz suggested cheerfully. "How would you like me to do that?"

"Tell me a story?" Max suggested.

Liz smiled. "A story, huh? Yeah, that's a great idea. I'll do that. And you stop me anytime I say a word that you don't understand and I'll pull it up on the tablet and explain. How does that work?"

"Perfect," Max agreed.

They settled down together on the couch, Liz leaning comfortably against Max's shoulder as she thought for a moment and then began to speak.

"My mom and dad were very young when they met and fell in love in a small town in Mexico. Well, at least my dad fell in love. To this day I'm not sure that my mom ever did…"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song is Beneath my Feet by Mumford & Sons. 
> 
> I tried to make Rosa’s fragments realistic enough for Max to be confused, but I’m hoping y’all can read between the lines and understand. If it’s confusing, let me know. I can always expand the convo for y’all.


	5. Chapter 5

~*~*~*~*~ _ Max _ ~*~*~*~*~

Liz’s first visit went so well, that Isobel gave in and agreed to let her come on a more regular basis. Max was thrilled and, although he could tell that Isobel was worried about his excitement, he could also tell that she liked seeing a difference in his behavior. Once, out of sheer curiosity, he tried to ask her what it was about Liz’s presence that bothered her so much, but the only response he got was, “Liz makes you stupid.” 

Max had no clue what his sister meant by that comment.

He was beginning to hope that Isobel might let him leave the house soon. Since Liz started coming over and spending time with him, Max found himself quickly acquiring more and more language skills. The only problem was, still no memories had returned. 

He and Liz would sit together for hours while she told him stories about her life, about her friends and family. Sometimes she talked about growing up in Roswell, and her years away from Roswell. But there was one subject that Liz never broached: anything involving their relationship. She hadn’t shared a single memory of the two of them, nor had they discussed where they might be going. He found the whole thing very strange.

After Liz's third visit, Max broke down and asked her why she never told him stories about the two of them and their relationship. He was surprised to see a sad, painful look pass across her face, before she admitted to him in a soft, guilty voice like she was confessing her worst sin, "Because I want you to remember that on your own."

He was beginning to wonder if remembering everything was just asking for too much at this point. Maybe the best they could hope for was getting him back to a place where he understood the world well enough that he could pretend to be human, so that he could play the part of his previous self. 

It was a Saturday morning, a few weeks after Liz's first visit, when Isobel asked for another full day from Liz so that she could take their mom shopping for the day in El Paso. It was over a 3 hour drive in each direction, so he and Liz had a long day alone together. Isobel got an early start to her day, and it was about an hour later that Max woke up to the sound of Liz knocking on the door, and leapt from the bed to open it.

"Good morning, Max!" Liz greeted him with a bright smile as she swept past him, heading for the kitchen with coffee and bagels for their breakfast.

"Good morning," he repeated groggily, as he followed her into the kitchen. She pushed one of the cups of coffee towards him and he took a grateful sip. 

"How did you sleep last night? Any dreams?"

Max took a moment to process the questions while trying to shake the sleepy fog from his brain. Nothing stood out as unusual. His night of sleep was just like the night before, and the one before that, and every night, really, since the pod. He slept like the dead. Deep, heavy, sleep that left him feeling like a zombie in the morning. The night itself was like a blanket of darkness, of nothingness. No dreams, no memories, nothing impressionistic at all. It was just empty.

"Same as always," he told her, taking another swig of coffee. "I really needed this. Thanks."

"Of course." Liz replied, sliding a plate with a bagel on it across the counter to him. "Eat your breakfast. I have a big day planned for us!"

Max looked at her curiously. “What’s happening?” 

She just smiled mysteriously. “You’ll see.”

They ate their breakfast comfortably, Liz chatting away, telling him a story about a summer spent in a research lab in rural Pennsylvania, alone working with a guy named Burt, who was a boring local, but she still slept with him for the summer because there was literally nothing else to do. “Burt thought I was exotic because I’m Mexican,” Liz told him with a laugh. “He was quite possibly the most sheltered person I ever met in my life.” Max nodded and chuckled with agreement, while all he could think was how jealous he was of Burt, and how he wanted to punch stupid Burt in his stupid face for being lucky enough to have an entire summer alone with Liz. 

The same Liz who was sitting motionless at the moment, except for her mouth chewing on her bagel. She looked like her mind had drifted off in thought. Max traced her focused gaze and realized that her eyes were glued to his bare chest. He rubbed his neck awkwardly as he suddenly realized for the first time that he was just in his sweat shorts. Suddenly he felt very naked. He threw back the last gulp of his coffee and cleared his mess.

“Um… I’m going to shower and get dressed…” Max told her. “And then I guess you can show me your big surprise?”

A half hour later, he was buckled into the passenger seat of Liz’s car, as she drove them out of Isobel’s neighborhood, towards the edge of town, and further still, until they were surrounded by mostly desert, with a few sparse, scattered homes. She took a turn off the highway and onto a dirt road, and followed it a half mile or so until the road dead ended at a house. Liz parked the car out front next to a Jeep that looked like it had seen better days, and then turned her attention to Max.

“Here we are.” He opened the door and stepped out of the car, looking around and trying to figure out the surprise. There didn’t appear to be anything particularly unique about the house. It was an Adobe desert home, typical New Mexican style, so he heard, at least. There was a fire pit and chairs out front, but a few of them had been knocked over and it looked as though no one had used it in a while. The landscape was natural, dry, wild, native desert. 

“Where’s here?” He finally asked.

“Hmm.” Liz murmured, sounding disappointed. “Why don’t we go inside?”

Liz opened the door without knocking and led him inside. He stopped in his tracks right in the doorway, soaking in the sight of the room in front of him. It was just a normal house. Couch and coffee table in the middle of the room. Chair, desk, and computer off to one side. There was a bar between the main room and the kitchen. But none of that was what made the house interesting to him.

It was the walls. 

Most of the walls were lined with shelves, floor to ceiling, and every space on every shelf was filled with a book. There had to be hundreds of them, maybe even thousands. 

He shook himself out of his initial stupor and walked into the room, closing the door behind him, and went straight to the closest shelf. With a feather-light touch, he ran his fingers along the bindings. 

With the exception of Michael, Isobel, and Liz, nothing had felt quite so right to him, so  _ familiar _ as these books. Which was ironic since he could barely read at all. Most of his energy had been focused on understanding people and speaking. He figured reading could come later. But suddenly, standing there, surrounded by all of these amazing books, he found himself desperately wishing that he could read them.

He slid a single book off of the shelf. It was a simple looking book, leather bound, with only words written on the cover. No pictures to speak of. Again, he lightly ran his fingers over the cover, before opening it to some random page in the middle. 

He wished that he could absorb the words by touch; that running his fingers over the pages was enough for him to know the stories, understand their secrets. For now they remained a mystery, locked away from him.

"What do you think?" 

Liz's voice shook him back to the present and he turned to look at her. She had a wistful smile on her face, and was that tears in her eyes?

"What is this place, Liz?" He asked, "It's amazing. I've never seen so many books before."

She chuckled, "You mean, you don't remember seeing so many books before." Liz corrected him.

"Good point," He concurred.

"What book have you got there?" 

He walked over and handed it to her. She looked at the cover and laughed again.

"Interesting choice. A little on point, aren't we?" she teased.

"What?" Max responded, thoroughly confused. "Liz, you know I can't read, right?” Apparently she didn't. The smile melted off her face into a look of absolute horror.

"No, I didn't even think…God, I'm so embarrassed. Of course you can't."

"We've been focusing on trying to help me communicate with people so that I can go out into the world. I don't think it even occurred to Isobel that I need help with reading too."

"I'm so sorry, Max."

"So tell me about the book,” he suggested. “What about it made you laugh?"

"It's Kafka," Liz explained, as she led Max over to the couch to sit down. "That's the author's name. The book is called _The Metamorphosis_." She pulled her iPad out of her bag, and pulled up a video, which she played for him while she continued to talk. 

"The word metamorphosis means ‘to change’. It's most often associated with insects. Particularly with caterpillars. You see, watch this. As teenagers, caterpillars build themselves a cocoon, not all that different from your pod. They go into their cocoons and they go through metamorphosis, they change. And when it's all over, they break free of their cocoon, and they aren't caterpillars anymore. They've changed into butterflies."

The video looped back around a second time and Max watched again as the little caterpillar built its cocoon right around its little body and went to sleep, before breaking out, unfurling its wings, and flying away.

"Do you think that's what happened to me in the pod?" he asked. "Do you think I went through a meta… meta…"

"Metamorphosis…" Liz supplied.

"... metamorphosis." he repeated. "Did I change in there?"

"I don't know, Max." Liz admitted sadly. "I don't think we can know for sure until you're back to your old self."

"But what if that never happens," Max protested. "What if I’m just who you're left with? What if I never remember anything and I just stay this useless shell of a man for the rest of my life? How long do you tolerate waiting for me to find my memories before you realize it’s best to just give up on me?"

"Max, if you don't find your memories, we'll just have to make new ones." Liz insisted, grabbing his hand. Doing so connected them enough that he could feel the truth in what she was saying. She was not planning to leave him anytime soon. The feeling of her love and dedication made him relax, letting out the tension that he hadn't even realized had been building within him.

Suddenly, Liz smacked him on the shoulder and he stared at her, rubbing the spot in shock. "And don't you dare start going around calling yourself useless, Max Evans,” she exclaimed with a glare. “You are extraordinary."

They sat together on the couch for a long while, Liz reading the book to him. His eyes followed her finger as it led him through each word. Now and then they stopped so that Liz could explain something to him, or show him a representative photo or video on the iPad. 

Max couldn't remember the last time he felt so comfortable. The couch felt just right to him, comfortable, familiar. Liz was leaning against him, the book sitting half on each of their laps, and he had an arm lazily draped over her shoulder. Liz's voice kept his attention mesmerized, focused, and soon he began to understand her amusement over the book he had selected.

" _ All right, people did not understand his words any more, although they seemed clear enough to him, clearer than before, perhaps because his ears had become accustomed to them. _ " She read aloud, " _ But at least people now thought that things were not well with him and were prepared to help him. The confidence and assurance with which the first arrangements had been carried out made him feel good. He felt himself included once again in the circle of humanity… _ "

Lazily Max found himself feeling relieved that he at least still looked human. If he had physically changed in the pod, his life would never get back to normal.

A little bit later, Liz put the book down and offered to make some lunch. Max nodded in agreement. While Liz was working in the kitchen, Max wandered the room, looking around at some of the details of the place. Alongside one wall, behind the desk, was another bookshelf that reached almost to the ceiling, with a cushioned bench built into the front of it. Max wandered over to take a closer look. The books on this shelf were all leather-bound, older. It was clear that this shelf was full of special keepsakes.

He reached out to select a book for a closer look when suddenly he felt his mind drift... _ his heart was pounding wildly, his hands on her hips...their lips crashing together with desperation, like they couldn't be apart, because deep down they had both been so afraid that they wouldn't survive the night. She was the first to pull back though, not because she wanted to stop, but because she wanted to tug her tank top up over her head and off. He pulled back and watched, soaking in the sight of her in this moment, because of course she was fulfilling one of his deepest fantasies. Her, aching for him, in his arms, in his favorite place in the whole damn world...surrounded by his books. God, he was a nerd. But then as she discarded her tank top to the side, his eyes also dropped and focused on the huge bandage taped to her side.  _

_ “Liz, wha..?” _

His mind snapped back into focus, but he stayed frozen, staring at the spot where he had just envisioned Liz perched above him, as they kissed. Was it a fantasy? His imagination running wild as his feelings for Liz grew deeper? Or was it something more...a flash from the past. He wanted to ask Liz, but if it wasn't real, admitting the fantasies that were playing out in his head could ruin the good thing they had going on. No, he'd better keep it to himself. Make sure it was something real before taking it to her.

He took a step back from the bookshelf, flexing his fingers. It was only a memory...dream... hallucination… whatever it was. But if that was true then why did his hands feel so empty without her skin beneath them?

He turned and wandered towards the hallway that led to the back of the house. "Is it okay if I look around the rest of this place?" He called out to Liz in the kitchen. 

"Of course!" she replied, "Just maybe don't linger in the guest room..."

He wandered down the hallway, peeking into the first door (bathroom), second (guest room), and then finally the last room at the end of the hall. The door was ajar so he just stood in the hallway and looked into the master bedroom.

There were still embers glowing in the adobe fireplace in the corner from the night before, making the room seem warm and comfortable. The bed was casually made, but without a fuss.

He could almost imagine himself being comfortable here, loved here. Again, his mind began to drift and through the fog in his mind, more images rose to the surface.  _ Her hands burned like fire on his skin as she pushed his shirt off of his shoulders. He couldn't stop kissing her. With every touch he needed her more. He felt her hands slide lower, loosening his belt buckle, pulling it free and unbuttoning his jeans all in one smooth act. He had enough of standing. He backed her slowly towards the bed, and gently lowered her until she was laying on her back beneath him, both of them sliding their pants off, ready to take this thing to the next level… _

"Max!" Liz's voice suddenly broke through the vision and pulled him back into the present. "Everything ok?"

He blinked and stared at the empty bed in front of him. “Yeah…” he responded, wondering what the hell was going on.


	6. Chapter 6

~*~*~*~*~ _ Liz _ ~*~*~*~*~

"Is it okay if I look around the rest of this place?" Max called out to her as she slathered mayo onto a slice of bread. Liz didn't even look up at him. It was his house, after all. Getting him to look around and hopefully trigger some memories was the whole point in being here.

"Of course!" she replied. It was so weird that he was asking permission in his own house, which still felt more like  _ him _ than anyone else. It was just another layer to the overall strangeness of this situation they were all stuck in. Him living with Isobel until he could be on his own. Liz and Rosa holed up in his house in the meantime.  _ Oh, Rosa…  _

"Just maybe don't linger in the guest room..." Liz called back to him. A peek wouldn't be intrusive, but Rosa didn't need Max going through her things.

Liz idly hummed to herself as she finished making the sandwiches. Meat, cheese, a little bit of mustard, and she sliced each of them in half. Grabbing both plates she stepped out of the kitchen and into the hallway.

She paused, watching Max silently for a moment. He was standing at the end of the hallway, staring into his bedroom. His eyes looked glazed over. She took a step towards him, and noticed that he looked flushed, and was breathing a bit too quickly. 

If it was a memory flash she wanted to leave him to it, but the physical response was concerning. She didn't want to break him out of it, but if he were beginning to remember, it wouldn't just be a one time thing, right? More flashes would come?

"Max!" Liz called out loudly, and she saw him visibly snap back into consciousness. "Everything ok?"

"Yeah," he replied, his voice still sounding a bit dazed. His eyes suddenly focused on her and he shook his head, a visible flush creeping up his neck. "Yes." He insisted more firmly this time. 

He hurried down the hallway to her and she handed him the two plates in her hands, and went back into the kitchen for a couple of glasses of water. 

They settled back down on the couch to eat lunch. Max was quiet while he ate, which left Liz wondering about the daze she caught him in. If it really was a memory coming back, why wouldn't he say anything? He had been so desperate to get his memories back, she expected him to want to celebrate any progress.

"Max…" she finally broke the silence. "What happened in the hallway just now. You seemed like you were somewhere else for a moment there."

Max seemed to be staring intently at his sandwich, trying. "I… I'm not really sure." He looked around the room, his eyes focusing on one of the bookshelves, and Liz saw him flush slightly. "This place...I don't know...there's something about it. You never answered me earlier, Liz. Whose house is this? Is it yours?"

She was about to respond when the front door flew open, and Rosa sauntered in. 

"_Hola_," Rosa greeted them idly, but her attention was focused on her new phone.

"Hey," Liz responded with a sigh, almost in unison with Max saying, "Hi."

Both of their voices seemed to catch Rosa's attention and she looked up at them, her eyes narrowing as she took in the scene.

"Oh, you two are here. Does this mean I've got to move out?"

"Max, meet my sister, Rosa." Liz sighed with a roll of her eyes.

Rosa continued as if she hadn't even heard Liz. "Because I have to tell you, I'm really not dying to move in with Kyle right now. And you still won't let me go see _Papi_, so my options are kinda limited."

"We've met," Max informed Liz. Liz stared at him. "What?" she asked. "When?"

"She came to see me a while back, before you started coming to visit." He turned to Rosa and gave her an awkward, apologetic smile. "I didn't understand everything you said to me that night, but I think the general theme was ' _ don't hurt my sister, or I'm going to hurt you',  _ or something along those lines."

"Hey, give me some credit,  _ vato _ ! I also said thank you!"

"Oh right," Max remembered, scratching his head. "Yeah, after all of the yelling that part seemed weird, but I forgot all about it since I didn't understand."

Liz and Rosa looked at each other in shock. 

"You didn't understand the words?" Liz asked, carefully studying Max's face to see how he reacted. He still just looked confused though as he replied. "No, I didn't know what she was thanking me for." Again, Liz and Rosa just stared at each other, wide eyed. 

"Isobel and Michael never told you why you were in the pod." Liz stated. It wasn't a question anymore, just a fact. She stood, pacing around the room while processing what she had just learned. Her blood was starting to boil a bit, and she wanted to explode at Max's siblings, for babying him, keeping secrets from him, not preparing him properly for his life on earth since the pod. But even more than that she wanted to give Max the things he needed that they weren't giving him. If she needed to teach him how to read, one of the most essential parts of his nature, she would do it. If she had to explain to him that they discovered the limits of his healing abilities when he brought Rosa back, and therefore he damn well better not try anything like that again, then she would do it. Clearly Michael and Isobel weren't worried about him needing to learn from the past, but damn it, Elizabeth Ortecho was  _ NOT _ going to lose Max Evans again.

"Rosa, would you mind giving Max and I some space today? I'll explain everything to him, but I think it'd be better if we do it alone. He's going home to Isobel's house tonight, so please come back this evening."

Rosa nodded, "I've been wanting to go visit Alex out at his cabin anyway. Today's as good a day as any for that. See you tonight, Liz."

~*~*~*~*~ _ Max _ ~*~*~*~*~

The door had closed behind Liz’s departing sister easily ten minutes earlier, but Liz hadn’t sat back down with him yet. He sensed that she was angry about something he said, but he didn’t really understand what he did wrong. So he sat there, watching as she stormed angrily around the house, cleaning up from their lunch while muttering words he didn’t understand under her breath.

Finally her energy seemed to slow, and she paused, just outside of the room he sat in. She was silently staring at him with an expression that he didn’t fully understand on her face. Her anger having finally cooled, he felt like it was probably safe to speak.

“I’m sorry, Liz. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

She sighed, running a hand through her hair, before crossing the room to sit opposite him on the coffee table, their knees almost touching. “You didn't do anything wrong, Max. I’m not mad at you, I’m mad for you. It’s been weeks since you emerged from the pod, and the things that Isobel and Michael aren’t doing for you are upsetting to me. I just think you deserve better. We can’t sit around and assume that you’re going to wake up tomorrow with your memory repaired. You deserve to work towards having a full life whether or not you remember your life before the pod.”

Liz reached across the distance between them and took his hands into hers. Her thumbs rubbed gently back and forth along the back of his hands and it gave him a sense of comfort.

“Max...what do you know about love?”

“Love?” He asked her, surprised by the strange question.

“Yes. The concept of love, but also feelings of love, different types of love… do you understand love?”

“I think so,” Max responded, slightly puzzled by the question. “I haven’t really thought about it much. But Isobel and I did watch some movies and tv together to help me with the language. So I’ve seen some love stories. Isobel and Michael are my family, so what I feel for them must be love, right? I feel something for you too. Something very different than what I feel for them. But I don’t know if I can fully explain it. I just… you make me want to be better. I want to learn and grow; I want to remember things for you, Liz. Everything feels like it’s for you, Liz.”

Tears were streaming down Liz’s cheeks and Max gasped. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I can’t seem to get anything right today.”

Liz sniffled and released his hands to wipe the tears from her eyes. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Max. You did just fine. I think what you just described is your love. For me.” She took a deep breath and continued. “Which is good because it’ll make this next part a bit easier. Before you went into the pod, you and I were very much in love with each other. It was new,” Liz continued to explain, “And extremely intense. That day...that morning, really, we made love for the first time. Right here, in this house.”

Max’s eyes widened and his mind raced back to the two flashes he had earlier, both of himself and Liz...doing things...in this house. For the first time, he began to truly wonder if they were real memories and not just...fantasies.

"I think I did a stupid, selfish thing." Liz burst out angrily, again wiping the tears from her cheeks. "I felt guilty for falling in love with you and I was a coward and was afraid to say the words to you. But I wanted you to know that this was real, so instead of saying it, I asked you to use your powers to connect us, so that you could feel everything that I felt for you. What I didn't think about was that it included all of the bad with the good. So while you got to feel how much I love you, you also felt my guilt and fear for loving you."

"We were both riding such a high. You wanted us to stay in, stay together for the day. But my guilt was driving me to leave, to go to the cemetery and visit my dead sister's grave. So I left."

Liz's breath grew unsteady but she pushed on, barely pausing like she was afraid that if she stopped she wouldn't be able to start again.

"I don't really know much about what happened to you after that. All I know is that I was at the cemetery when suddenly I felt our connection go cold. I don't know how I knew where to go...I just drove straight out to the desert to where I sensed you were. But instead of you, I found Rosa walking towards me."

Liz met Max's eyes with an intensity that made his heart stop. "Rosa had been dead for ten years, Max. That's what you did that nearly killed you. You brought my sister back from the dead. For me. And I want to make something very clear to you, Max Evans. I never want you to do something that stupid again. Ever. You are too important to me and I can't lose you."

Max stood, stepping away from Liz and turning his back to lean on the counter behind him. He was trying to wrap his mind around what Liz was telling him, both the idea that he could bring someone back to life, years after they died, and the fact that it was Liz's sister, the fiery girl that he had met twice now...the girl who got in his face, threatened him to protect her sister. She intimidated the hell out of him. Nothing about Rosa screamed  _ "former dead girl" _ . 

And then there was Isobel and Michael, who never mentioned any of this to him. He thought back to the first few weeks after he awoke, when all of their time was spent in Michael's bunker, testing out his powers. It occurred to him for the first time that only once did healing power come up, when Isobel nicked her hand on a stray piece of sheet metal in the lab, she asked Max to heal it. Once they confirmed that he could still do that, they never pushed him to try again or show more, unlike every single other ability. At the time he just assumed that there wasn't anything to heal, but the truth was now weighing on his shoulders. They didn't push him because they were afraid to let him use that particular ability. They didn't want to encourage him to try to save anyone else at his own expense.

Distantly, he heard Liz's gentle voice interrupting his thoughts, "I didn't tell you this to upset you, Max. I just think you need to know. Not for me, or for Rosa...for yourself. You found your limit, ignored it, and it nearly killed you. Which means now we know how much you can do, and what the line is that you cannot cross. I'm going to be forever grateful that you gave me my sister back, Max. But I don't want you to ever risk your life to resurrect somebody again."

Her voice jarred him away thoughts of Rosa and Michael and Isobel, to the other pieces of the puzzle that Liz had admitted to him. Not only were they in love, but they had  _ made love _ . Here. Which means that the flashes that he got earlier might very well have been real memories and not just his own imagination running out of control. He had been too ashamed to ask her about them earlier, but now, after everything that she had just shared with him, he had a feeling that it would be okay.

He whirled back around, pushing himself to ask the question before he lost his nerve, but he wasn’t prepared for Liz’s small form standing close behind him. He slammed right into her, awkwardly, and there was a loud crash as she fell to the floor.

“Liz!” He cried out, while mentally berating himself for his clumsiness. “I’m so sorry, are you okay?”

He offered her a hand to help her up, but it was quickly apparent that she couldn’t take it. There was a large shard of glass lodged vertically into the palm of her hand, blood pouring from the wound. And only after seeing her injury, he realized that she was surrounded by broken glass. 

“Um...Max? I think I’m going to need some help.” Liz’s voice was shaky and faint as she stared at the glass sticking out of her hand. He took a step closer to her, crouching down to her level, though he couldn’t kneel or sit because of the glass all over the floor.  _ Liz first.  _ He told himself. The rest could wait.

“Give me your hand,” he directed her. She held it out to him, and gently he closed his fingers around her wrist, holding her hand steady. He focused on the glass, using his powers to gently lift the shard vertically from her skin, careful not to let it knick the sides or widen the wound any further. 

Once the glass was completely free of her skin, he gently tossed it to the side with his mind, and quickly pressed his fingertips to the wound. This time he focused on her injury, on repairing the damaged skin. His hand glowed, a brief moment of warmth as the energy rushed through him, and then it was done.

There was still too much blood though. After only a split second of hesitation, he pulled his shirt off, and used it to wipe the blood away from her hand first, and then his. Once clean, he ran his fingers one more time over her palm, checking to be sure she was fine. Her skin was smooth, flawless.

He waved his hand one last time to clean up the remaining broken glass that surrounded them. It flew neatly into a pile a few feet away. Then he clasped hands with her and pulled her to her feet.

Only then, he finally looked up and met her eyes. She was staring at him, wide-eyed and shocked. 

“Max...what is going on with your powers!?!”


	7. Chapter 7

~*~*~*~*~ _ Liz _ ~*~*~*~*~

Max's silence was making her crazy. His back was to her, so she couldn't see his face. He was silent, so she couldn't hear his voice. She desperately wanted to know what was going on inside his head, but he was completely closed to her, for the first time all day. 

"I didn't tell you this to upset you, Max," she tried to explain as she pushed herself to her feet. "I just think you need to know. Not for me, or for Rosa...for yourself."

She took a few steps towards him, but he still didn't react, so she continued.

"You found your limit, ignored it, and it nearly killed you." She heard her voice crack just a bit at the thought of how certain she was that he was dead when she found him in the cave, but she pushed the sadness down and focused her attention on him. "Which means now we know how much you can do, and what the line is that you cannot cross. I'm going to be forever grateful that you gave me my sister back, Max. But I don't want you to ever risk your life to resurrect somebody again."

She closed the rest of the distance between them, but still he hadn't moved. She debated whether to reach out to touch him, comfort him, but she wasn't sure if that was what he wanted from her. Before the pod there would have been no question, but now? She wasn’t entirely sure where his boundaries lay. It made sense though. If Max didn't know who he was, how could he possibly know what he wanted from Liz?

Before she could decide what to do, Max clearly made up his mind, because he suddenly whirled around, slamming into her. She grunted as she fell, instinctively, trying to brace herself for the impact. There was a loud crash as her hip hit the edge of the coffee table. The sound of shattering glass rang out as her hands landed flat on the table. Liz cried out at the sudden sharp pain in her palm. 

Distantly, she could hear Max's voice, worried and apologetic, directed at her, but she didn't really hear what he was saying, because all she could do was stare at the huge shard of glass protruding from her increasingly bloody hand.

“Um...Max? I think I’m going to need some help.” 

He quickly acted, which was very typical Max, Liz thought. Even without his memories, his natural instinct was to save the day.

“Give me your hand,” he ordered in a firm, insistent voice, and she did what he asked, holding out her injured hand to him, and waiting for him to do his thing.

When the glass seemed to carefully life from her skin, seemingly on her own, she gasped out loud, and stared at Max in complete shock. It was definitely him, his eyes were narrowed and focused on the glass. Once it was completely free of her skin, he just made the slightest tilt of his head to the side, and the shard went flying to the floor a few feet away, like he had thrown it away with disgust.

Two gentle fingers then pressed lightly against her wound. Again, Max's eyes focused firmly on her hand. His fingers started to glow, as the healing energy flowed from his body into hers. It was a strange sensation. When he had previously healed her, she had been unconscious and had no real memories of the experience. This time she could feel the warmth of his touch growing slightly warmer. There was a surge, almost like an electrical shock. And she could feel her skin fusing back together again seamlessly, like nothing had happened at all. 

When Max pulled back, the only signs of her injury remaining were the blood covering both of their hands, and the bloody shard of glass lying a few feet away. 

Before she could even react, Max had pulled his shirt off, covering her injured hand with it, and carefully wiping away the remaining blood. Afterwards, he ran his fingers lightly over the flawless skin of the palm of her hand, like he was checking to make sure he didn't miss a spot. His gentle touch made her shiver, her entire body drawn to him, desperately wanting him, even though she knew the time was not yet right.

Another wave of his hand and the remaining broken glass that surrounded them flew into a neat pile a few feet away. Then Max firmly clasped their palms together and pulled her to her feet.

She was still studying him, utterly amazed at what he had revealed to her. He slowly looked up, meeting her eyes for the first time since she fell. He looked pained, worried, like he was expecting her to be angry with him. Liz could barely even process the concept of anger. Instead she just burst out with the one thought repeating over and over again in her mind.

“Max...what is going on with your powers!?!”

He didn’t respond right away. Instead he stepped back from her, rubbing his neck in that awkward way that always revealed how uncomfortable he was with the conversation. She waited, trying to be patient while inside her heart was pounding with curiosity.

“Liz, you know I don’t remember anything from before...so all I have to go on here is what Michael and Isobel have told me. And with everything you’ve told me today, there’s a part of me that’s starting to wonder what else they’re  _ not _ saying.”

“Talk to me, Max,” Liz pressed. “I’m on your side here. Maybe I can help.”

“Isobel said that the pod changed me. That I came back different. Stronger, with new powers, maybe even more...alien...than I was before.” He held out his hands, studying them. “All we did for weeks when I first came back was test them out, to try to see what I can do now. It’s almost like they only care about what I can do, instead of who I am. It wasn’t until you got involved that I started to feel like a real person again instead of just this tool to be used.”

“Max, I’m so sorry,” Liz murmured. 

“What did you see?” He suddenly asked her. “Just now, I mean. What was different from your perspective? It’s still not entirely clear to me what is new and what was from before.”

Liz replayed the past few minutes in her head, thinking through each use of his powers. “Well, you couldn’t do telekinesis before at all...that was always Michael’s thing. And when you healed me, it just seemed...easier? You didn’t seem to be pushing through some tremendous effort to make it work. You didn’t cry out from the effort of it all. Healing always seemed to be hard on you before, and you always got sick afterwards. You didn’t this time.”

Max nodded silently in response to her assessment. Then he turned and looked at the carefully placed pile of broken glass. Liz watched as he crossed the room, slowly, and then crouched down beside the rubble. He looked up at her again.

“What about this?” He asked softly. “Could I do this before?”

He held his hand over the pile of shards, his eyes focusing, when his hand suddenly started to glow, like it did when he healed her. Liz gasped out loud as the shards of glass started to move, each one flying to find its place next to another, like puzzle pieces, revealing a picture all on their own. As each piece found its home, the crack between the shards brightly glowed, mimicking Max’s hand, as it sealed the glass back together again.

When the glowing subsided, in place of the small pile of rubble sat the two glass candles that had shattered when Liz fell into the coffee table. Like they had never been broken. Liz met Max’s eyes, feeling utterly amazed.

“No.” She told him. “That’s definitely a new one.”

“I think I can just reshape objects,” he tried to explain. “Michael had some sciencey term for it that I can’t remember.”

Liz bit her lower lip, and studied the candleholders again. “Maybe it’s like you can manipulate the molecular structure of objects?” She wondered. “I’d have to run a few tests to be sure, but that’s the most logical conclusion I can think of.”

"Liz…are  _ you _ okay?" Max asked pointedly. 

"I'm fine!" She insisted. "You took care of me, Max. I'm mostly just worried about you. Today has been a lot for you."

He nodded, and she watched as his eyes searched the room, lingering momentarily on the tall bookshelf against the wall, and then again on the hallway to his bedroom. She wondered if her crazy plan had actually been somewhat successful. Did taking Max home for the day help him or did it hurt him?

"Liz you still haven't answered my question. Whose house  _ is  _ this? Is it yours?" 

Liz sighed. It wasn't that she was dodging the question. It just felt so strange to tell Max about his own life. And unfortunately the story of how he ended up acquiring his own property wasn't a story that she knew the details of just yet. But she had promised to be the one who was always on his side, so the time was now.

"No, it isn't mine. Although right now Rosa and I are living here. Temporarily." She explained, "Actually, it's your house, Max."

"Mine…" Max murmured softly as his eyes surveyed the room once again.

"I'd hoped that maybe bringing you here -- somewhere so comfortable and familiar to you -- might trigger some memories or something. But I guess I was wrong. I guess you've finally turned me into a hoping kind of person, Max."

Liz knew he wouldn't understand the reference, but she wasn't really expecting the complete lack of response from him. Once again, Max was staring down the hallway towards the bedrooms. He looked deep in thought, like he was trying to make up his mind about something.

After the long silence when he finally spoke, it almost made her jump in surprise.

"It did work, Liz."

"What!?!" He turned to look at her. He looked a little flushed as he repeated his statement.

"It worked, Liz. at least I think it did. I think I got a few memory flashes earlier today. I wasn't entirely sure what they were at first… if they were real, or just a dream or something. But some of the things you've told me today… I think they might be real." 

"What did you see?" Max flushed again at the question. 

"Um, I'm not sure I can describe it in words. Would you let me show you?"

Liz nodded. "Go ahead."

She could see Max's hand shaking slightly as he reached out to slide the sleeve of her tank top to the side. He was nervous, she could tell, and the feeling was a bit contagious. They hadn't connected like this since her first visit. With Max working so hard to improve his language skills, it seemed best to focus on verbal communication. But as she watched his trembling hand slide over her heart, she was suddenly hungry for that sensation that came with the connection, the feeling of being overwhelmed by the incredible depth of everything that he felt when he looked at her. God, she missed him.

She closed her eyes and gasped as the connection took hold. The rush of emotion crashed over her like a tidal wave, and she reached out and grasped Max's arm to steady herself, even though she knew it was just sensations.

There was a blink, a rush, and then time rewound. Liz could see herself in the kitchen making lunch, just a few hours earlier, while he wandered the room.

He paused in front of the tallest bookshelf, noticing the keepsakes and organization of the shelf and how it implied that these books were somehow more important than the rest.

He reached out to select a book for a closer look when suddenly he felt his mind drift... _ his heart was pounding wildly, his hands on her hips...their lips crashing together with desperation, like they couldn't be apart, because deep down they had both been so afraid that they wouldn't survive the night. She was the first to pull back though, not because she wanted to stop, but because she wanted to tug her tank top off up over.her head. He pulled back and watched, soaking in the sight of her in this moment fulfilling one of his deepest fantasies. Her, aching for him, in his arms, in his favorite place in the whole damn world... surrounded by his books. God, he was a nerd. But then as she discarded her tank top to the side, his eyes also dropped and focused on the huge bandage taped to her side.  _

_ “Liz, wha..?” _

The memory faded and he was just standing there, his hand on a book, trying to figure out what had just happened.

He pulled them back from that moment with his mind and forward to a second incident that day. This one, Liz had noticed, unlike the bookshelf memory. Max was frozen in the hallway, staring into his bedroom. He was examining the room, considering how warm and comfortable it seemed with the adobe fireplace glowing in the corner. It almost felt loving, like what home should feel like.

But as he stared at the bed, his mind began to drift again, and images overtook his mind. 

_ Her hands burned like fire on his skin as she pushed his shirt off of his shoulders. He couldn't stop kissing her. With every touch he needed her more. He felt her hands slide lower, loosening his belt buckle, pulling it free and unbuttoning his jeans all in one smooth act. He had enough of standing. He backed her slowly towards the bed, and gently lowered her until she was laying on her back beneath him, both of them sliding their pants off, ready to take this thing to the next level… _

"Max!" Her own voice suddenly broke through the vision, interrupting the memory and dragging him back into the present. "Everything ok?"

The flashes faded into darkness, but Liz continued to hold onto him, and Max had yet to pull away. There was comfort in being connected to him like this. He still felt like himself, the emotion, the love, the pain...it was all still there inside of him. And the physical connection associated with it, being so close to each other that she could feel the heat radiating from his bare skin, his breath tracing a path across her face. Her hand slid from his arm to his chest, where it lingered, softly caressing his torso instinctively. 

All she wanted to do was reach up and pull his face down to hers so that she could kiss him until he was losing control. She wanted to pull him back to his bedroom, strip his remaining clothes from his body, and have her way with him. She ached for him.

This was why she hadn't let him connect to her again since that first day. It felt too good. It felt like everything was right. It made her burn for things she couldn't have until all the things that were wrong inside his mind were repaired...or until they had accepted that they never would be and agreed to move forward and forget the past.

Reluctantly, with that last thought weighing on her heart, Liz finally let go of him and pulled away. It was only when she stepped away, turning her back on Max while she tried to reestablish control over her own emotions, that she realized that her cheeks were salty and damp. She hadn't even realized that she was crying.

"Yeah," she said aloud, trying to sound casual, rather than like she was overwhelmed with emotion. "Those were definitely memories, Max."

"And that was...that day? The day when…"

"When we made love, when you brought my sister back to life, when you nearly died, when we put you in the pod, and when I lost you." Liz felt her voice wavering and she desperately hoped she wouldn't break down again. "I was so happy in those memories, but when I think back on them, they're heartbreaking in so many ways."

"I'm sorry I hurt you." Max murmured to her. "I mean, I don't remember it or what it was like to be him, but I think I know enough to know that hurting you was the last thing that he… that I… would have wanted "

"I know that!" Liz burst out. "Of course I know that. It doesn't make it any easier though."

Liz sighed shakily and and walked away from him for a moment to clear her head. She went back to the bedroom, opened the closet, and pulled out one of Max's t-shirts for him to change into. She headed back out to him only to find him still standing in the same spot, waiting for her. He was looking at her with so much sadness in his eyes, and she just suddenly felt like she couldn't handle his pain and uncertainty. For one night she just needed some space to fall apart on her own. 

"Look, it's been a long day," she told him. "Why don't I take you home. You've got a lot to think about, and Isobel should be home soon. I think you can handle a little bit of time on your own."

He nodded and waited quietly as she gathered her things and prepared to drive him home. She was quiet, tense on the drive, and when she pulled her car into Isobel's driveway, she could sense Max's hesitation to get out of the car. She waited silently, and finally he released his seatbelt and got out of the car. Before he closed the door, he turned back to Liz one more time.

"Thank you, Liz. For everything you did for me today."

He closed the door before she could respond. She watched his back until he disappeared into Isobel's house, and then finally she felt herself relax, just a bit. 

She backed her car out of the driveway and headed back to Max's house. She found his whiskey stash a few months earlier, and mostly had avoided it for Rosa's sake. Tonight seemed like a good night to indulge.


	8. Chapter 8

~*~*~*~*~ _ Max~*~ _ *~*~*~

It was late in the evening when Isobel finally returned home. A few hours had passed since Liz dropped him off, and Max had spent most of that time thinking through everything that Liz had revealed to him throughout the day. The more he lingered on the details that Isobel had somehow never bothered to mention to him, the more agitated he grew. 

He felt like he had been blind, naive. He had just taken what his siblings gave him, never really questioning it or pushing for more. Their silence had encouraged his silence, and it turned out that the one person, the one thing he wanted to know about the most was the key to everything.

Michael and Isobel had been holding him back all of this time.

He tried not to jump all over Isobel right when she walked through the door, her hands full of bags from her shopping trip. He sat at the kitchen table, waiting while she took the bags to her room, trying to be patient, but his fingers tapped against the table’s surface, and his foot bounced impatiently.

“Did you have a good day with Liz?” Isobel called to him, as she finally approached. Max ignored the question.

“We need to talk, Isobel.”

Isobel stopped in the doorway, and Max could tell that the seriousness of his tone was concerning her. "What's wrong?"

"That's kind of what I want to ask you." Max shot back. "Liz took me to my house today. She thought that maybe being there could trigger some memories."

"Did it?" Isobel asked softly.

Max ignored her question. "I also met Rosa today. Officially, I guess. I never told you that she came by the house once too."

"Max…" Isobel started, but he cut her off and just continued talking.

"So I was shocked to learn that I brought her back from the dead? And that's what almost killed me, forced me to go into the pod, and erased all of my memories?"

"Max, I didn't want you getting any ideas...you almost killed yourself to give Rosa a second chance. I didn't want you to ever think it's ok to do that again. If you didn't know, how could you try?"

"That's messed up, Isobel."

"You're probably right," Isobel conceded. "But I was afraid of losing you." Max sighed, frustrated by the response, so Isobel tried to explain further. "You don't know what it was like, Max. For all of us, waiting for you to heal, wake up. Not knowing if/when you ever would. All of us missed you and wanted you back. But, me, Michael, and Liz most of all, I think."

"The people who love me," Max realized, as he processed all of the things he learned that day.

"Exactly," Isobel nodded.

"So if you include Liz in that group, why did it take you so long to let me spend time with her?"

"Honestly, Max, that had more to do with you. When you first came out of the pod you were so cold and disconnected from her...it wasn't at all like you. And then you were so much stronger than before and had all of these new powers...I can't speak for Michael, but I'll be honest. I was a little bit afraid of you, Max. The pod changed you so much. At first I wasn't sure that my brother had come back at all."

"I guess I can understand that," Max admitted. "So that's why you focused so heavily on figuring out my powers...because they were new and you didn't know what it all meant." 

"Yeah," Isobel confirmed.

"So what about Liz? What made you change your mind about letting me see her?"

"Oh that was because of seeing her at the Crashdown." Isobel explained. "That day, when you looked at Liz, I saw my brother again. And the fact that your first response to seeing her again was, _'need to learn to talk, because, L_iz’. Well, that reaction was so very you, Max."

Max smiled a little at her comment. Maybe he wasn’t so different since coming out of the pod after all. 

“Going home did help,” he finally admitted to her. “I had my first memory flashes today.”

Isobel gasped, and Max could see the excitement in her eyes, “Really?!” She exclaimed.

“Please, Iz, don’t make too much of it. They were brief. Just... moments that meant a lot to me. I really don’t want to discuss them with everyone. They were...private.” He flushed again as he remembered the second memory...when he made love to Liz. 

He could remember every detail of that moment now. How it felt to be connected with her, inside of her, cupping her face, kissing her lips. His entire body burned from the memory of it, and he suddenly realized that it was because he wanted her. He wanted to kiss her and make love to her and show her with his hands and with his body how much he adored her. It felt like a new sensation to him, even though he was certain that it wasn’t. But the power of it overwhelmed him.

”Ugggh, you two make me gag,” Isobel groaned loudly, snapping Max’s attention back to the present. Before he could reply, his sister turned and left Max alone at the dining room table.

But after his sister was gone, Max found himself thinking about how quiet and uncomfortable things were with Liz on the drive home. He didn't  _ want _ to believe it, but maybe Isobel was wrong. Maybe it was just him that was so ridiculous. Because after everything that he had learned and seen with Liz today, he felt lighter and happier than he had in days.

_ She  _ was the one who seemed upset about everything.

~*~*~*~*~ _ Liz _ ~*~*~*~*~

Liz was just a teensy bit tipsy when Rosa pulled up to the house in Max’s Jeep. Only a wee bit. A tad. She only had  _ some _ of Max’s whiskey, after all. She didn’t, like, finish the bottle or anything. That would be crazy pants. 

Liz giggled, stumbling to the kitchen to hide the bottle before her sister walked in. “Can’t have Rosa finding the whiskey!” she murmured in a sing-song voice. She barely got the cabinet closed when she heard Rosa opening the door, and in the least stealthy way possible, Liz rushed from the kitchen in an attempt to stand nonchalantly in the doorway to greet her sister upon her entrance, except Rosa was already fully in the door by the time she got into position.

“That went smoother in my head,” Liz grumbled, as Rosa laughed at her.

Rosa studied her, eyes narrowed, and sniffed the air.

“Elizabeth Ortecho!” She gasped in mock-horror. “Have you been...drinking alcohol? I am shocked! Shocked and appalled! What kind of a role model do you think you’re being to your poor, damaged, older, but younger, addict sister!?”

“I had a hard day,” Liz groaned in a whiny voice, “It was stressful. I wanted to take the edge off...and then I just kept going...because Max.”

Rosa sat on the couch and patted her lap. “Come and tell your sister all about it.”

Liz smiled. Even though things had changed so much, in private some things could stay the same. Rosa might be almost a decade younger than Liz, thanks to her death and resurrection, but in their hearts, she would always be Liz’s big sister and the instinct was always there for Rosa to care for Liz, and Liz to allow herself to be cared for. So she lay down on the couch, her head in her sister’s lap, as Rosa combed her fingers through Liz’s hair comfortingly.

“It was...everything I wanted today to be, honestly.” Liz admitted. “It was practically perfect. I brought Max to the house, I started to work with him on reading. Thanks to you, I was able to explain to him what had happened to him, and the incredible gift he gave us by bringing you back to life. And he had his first brief memory flashes, and they were of us.”

“Well isn’t all of that good?” Rosa asked.

“Yes. It felt too good to be real. And then we had an accident, and he used his powers in front of me, and...he’s different Rosa. It’s not just his mind. It’s his capabilities too. He can do so much more with his powers than he could before. And it’s, like, instinctual for him now. It’s like the time in the pod made him an uber-alien or something.” Liz realized what she just said and giggled, the whiskey still influencing her a little too much, “Uber-alien. Oh my gosh…” she cackled.

“I still don’t get what was so rough about it all,” Rosa pushed. “None of that seems all that hard.”

Liz sighed, and tried to figure out how to explain. “It was a lot of things. It was all of the things that Isobel and Michael  _ weren’t _ doing for him. I mean, Max has been out of the pod for a while now, so why was today the first day that anyone sat down and taught him how to read? His books are such an integral part of his soul! Why was today the first time he heard about what he did to you? It’s absurd. His family isn't taking proper care of him, and it took me this long to notice. I feel like I've let him down."

"You  _ did _ notice though," Rosa pointed out. "And, like, immediately started fixing the problem. That's who you are, Liz. You care about these things. I'd expect nothing less from you."

"I guess," Liz agreed, but uncertainly. She paused, trying to figure out how to explain the rest, or if she even wanted to, because it really was so personal. But she looked at her sister, and found herself suddenly thinking about all of the conversations like this that she always wished that she could have with Rosa. And now Rosa was here with her, and it was finally possible, so she continued.

"There's one more thing too." Liz started. "The memory flashes that I mentioned? Max remembered our first time together."

"Your...oh." Rosa laughed loudly. "Men are so predictable. Go on. Tell me more."

"He, uh, he wasn't sure if it was really a memory at first, or if it was just a really vivid fantasy," Liz blushed at the implication, and suddenly found herself wondering if Max had been having frequent fantasies prior to today's flashes. She suspected not though, based on other conversations that they had.

"So after I told him about the day he brought you back, some of the details began to add up, so he asked me if he could show me what he saw, to find out if it was real or not."

"Show you? What?" Rosa looked confused and Liz realized that they hadn't had this conversation yet.

"Yeah, it's an alien thing. He can show me his memories. It's...intense. it's like I'm inside of him in those moments and reliving them, seeing what he saw and feeling what he felt. So, yeah reliving that particular memory with him was... challenging."

Rosa snorted. "You wanted to jump him, didn't you?"

" _ SO MUCH _ ," Liz emphasized with a laugh. "You have no idea how much."

"So why didn't you?" Rosa suggested mischievously. "It is Max, after all. It's not like you'd be cheating."

" _ Rosa!"  _ Liz protested with a laugh, sitting up and facing her sister directly. "It felt wrong, okay? This afternoon I had to explain to him what love is. Like, the whole concept of it was new to him. Yes, it's Max, but he's also, like, so naive and childlike. No matter how much I want him, it really wouldn't be right. At least not yet."

"Oh?" Rosa asked, eyebrow raised suggestively.

"I mean, this could be permanent," Liz pointed out. "We really don't know. Maybe he gets his memory back, or maybe this is the start of a new life for him. Either way, I still love him and I still want to be with him. Right now he's still adjusting, but eventually he'll be ready to move forward. And when he is, I'll be waiting for him."


	9. Chapter 9

~*~*~*~*~ _ Max~*~ _ *~*~*~

Max woke up the next morning confused, unsure about what his next step should be. The day before had been so intense, and so much progress had been made, that he didn’t quite know how to go back to life the way it had been 48 hours earlier. He was antsy, impatient, teeming with unspent energy that he just couldn’t figure out how to release.

He was also still frustrated with his sister for the way she had manipulated his recovery. Logically he understood that there was plenty of reasons for them to be uncomfortable with how the pod had changed him. But to keep him away from Liz and Rosa seemed to be an extreme reaction. His irritation with Isobel left him feeling suffocated in her house. He kept looking for ways to avoid her, while also trying not to feel too guilty at the hurt look in her eyes when he walked away.

On top of that, he was still concerned about Liz's reaction to the previous day's events. He wanted to check on her, but he was afraid she might not want to see him. Plus, as far as he knew, seeing her would require enlisting his sister's help, which would require spending time with her, which he wasn't sure he was ready for quite yet.

So mostly, he hid out in the outdoor courtyard of Isobel's house, a book in hand, tracing his fingers over the words and trying to interpret as many of them as he could from what Liz had taught him the day before. He wasn't quite to the point where he could follow the story, but he knew if he kept practicing and learning it would come with time.

By midday, Isobel seemed to take the hint and stopped trying to spend time with him. So after a few blissfully quiet hours, Max was surprised to hear the patio door open and footsteps approaching. He didn't look up, hoping that Isobel would give up again. The footsteps stopped a few feet away from him, but his sister didn't say anything. It was like she was happy just standing there watching him in silence. Well, good for her. Max was happy to let her. So he kept his nose in the book and waited for her to leave.

After a few minutes he started getting irritated. "What part of  _ 'leave me alone' _ is hard for you to understand, Isobel? I thought I was supposed to be the one with the messed up head."

"I'm sorry. I can go if you want me to."

It wasn't Isobel's voice.

Max's head shot up to find Liz standing a few feet away from him.

"Liz!" He exclaimed, quickly jumping to his feet so awkwardly that he forgot about the book sitting on his lap, which went crashing onto the cement between his feet. He rolled his eyes at himself, picked up the book, and placed it on the chair he had been sitting in, before turning his full attention onto her.

"What are you doing here?"

"I was hoping we could talk. Want to take a walk with me?" 

"Yes." Max agreed without even hesitating. "Absolutely. Whatever you want to do."

"Good." Liz said with a soft smile. "Come on then."

She led him back into the house, where Isobel was nowhere to be seen, and then out the front door to the street. Liz's car was parked next to Isobel's in the driveway, so his sister hadn't gone anywhere...she was just thankfully making herself scarce.

Liz led him down the sidewalk at a lazy, comfortable place. Max took the opportunity to study his surroundings. He hadn't been out of the house quite like this, on foot, free from the constraints of a driver and a mission -- whenever he left the house there was someone to see or a place to be. Being outside, away from his sister, breathing the fresh air under the blue sky, with Liz beside him… it all felt kind of wonderful. He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and strolled casually beside her.

They walked in what Max hoped was comfortable silence, until they reached a large park. Liz led him to a bench shaded by a large tree, and they sat down beside each other.

"Max, I wanted to apologise for my behavior last night," Liz started, taking Max immediately by surprise. "I know I probably confused you, and I owe you an explanation for that."

"I thought I did something wrong," Max admitted. "But I don't really know what I did. I was going to apologise anyway though. Whatever I have to do so we can stay friends."

"Oh, Max…" Liz sighed. She reached out and covered his hands with her own on his lap, sliding her fingers over his knuckles. "You have nothing to apologise for. You didn't do anything wrong. I was upset for a lot of different reasons yesterday, but none of it was supposed to be directed at you. I'm sorry that I made you feel that way."

"I don't understand," Max admitted. "If you weren't mad at me, then who were you mad at?"

"Well... Isobel and Michael, mostly," Liz tried to explain. "It was a hard day, Max. And it was made even harder than it needed to be because of how much they kept from you. I didn't think that was fair to you and it made me really angry. And I was mad at myself too."

"You didn't do anything wrong," Max insisted, surprised by her confession. 

Liz nodded. "Fair. I didn't do anything wrong, but I wanted to, and that's a problem that I'm still struggling with, Max. Because of my feelings for you, instinctively, there are things that I want from you that I really can't ask you for right now. And last night, when you showed me your memory flashes, it was really hard for me to fight that instinct." 

"You know I would do anything for you." Max insisted. "Whatever you need, I want to help you, Liz."

"No, Max!" Liz protested. "You're not ready for that yet, and I am not going to take advantage of you while you're healing. It's just hard sometimes, and I was hurting a bit last night, but I'm okay now and more importantly, we're okay now, Max. I'm just sorry that my behavior was so confusing for you."

"It's okay, Liz." Max insisted. "I just appreciate that you were so open and honest with me yesterday. I like knowing that there's at least one person in this world that I can trust...that isn't trying to hide things from me or use me."

"I just want you to have the tools you need to find your way back to yourself," Liz murmured, resting her head on Max's shoulder. He slid an arm around her, holding her close as she relaxed against his body. "Whether that's a path to regaining your memories, or just figuring out who you are now...it doesn't matter. I just want you to be able to live your life."

"Thank you," Max gratefully sighed, as he tilted his face closer to her hair, breathing in the soft hint of desert rose. "Thank you for everything, Liz."

They sat there on the bench, just silently sitting together as they watched people go through the motions of their lives in the park. Kids played on the playground while their parents watched from nearby. Young men and women jogged circuits around the perimeter of the park, while another couple played with a dog in the middle of the huge open lawn. There was something fascinating and enticing to Max about all of these people, going through the steps of a normal life. He wondered if his life had ever been this normal.

"Evans?" A voice interrupted his train of thought, and he turned to see a woman in a police uniform approaching them from the street behind them. He hadn't even heard the car pull up.

The woman had a sharp look on her face, eyes narrowed as she approached them.

"Sheriff Valenti!" Liz greeted the woman, her voice a little too loud and uncomfortable. 

"Liz," she responded shortly, quickly returning her attention to Max. "Now that I've found you, Deputy, I hope you're ready to talk, because you've got some serious explaining to do."

~*~*~*~*~ _ Liz~*~ _ *~*~*~

Liz was trying not to panic, but this was a situation that she simply didn't have a plan for. Isobel had been handling communication with Max's work, calling in his extended medical leave of absence, filing whatever paperwork was necessary. Liz wasn't even entirely sure what Isobel had told the Sheriff about Max's condition. And from the confusion she could sense from Max beside her, he wasn't entirely sure what to do either. Thankfully, the Sheriff didn't wait for an answer and just kept talking.

"Anyway, it's nice to see your face, Deputy. The way you dropped off the planet, I was starting to think we'd never see you again. You coming back to work anytime soon?"

Liz quickly tried to think of what to say. Max was improving quickly, but he still was missing most of his memory, which included all of his training at the academy. Not only would he be risking his secret if he went back to work too soon, he could be risking his life.

"I'm sorry, boss," Max replied, before Liz could even formulate a response. "I don't know what my sister told you, but I've been really sick. Barely even been out of the house since you saw me last. Even the walk down here with Liz is probably gonna do me in for a few days. It's been a slow recovery."

Liz stared at Max in shock, impressed with how smoothly he spun that explanation out of thin air. Of course, Max had been lying to people his entire life. He had to be much more practiced at it than Liz was. Even without his memory intact.

"Sorry to hear that Evans, but glad to see you're on the mend. Let me know when you might be ready for some shifts...even if it's just short hours on desk duty. I've been down two deputies for a few months now since Cameron left town and your LOA. Anything will help."

"I'll let you know as soon as I can do it," Max promised. 

"All right. You good to walk home, or you want a ride?"

Liz peeked at Max and decided it was probably best to sell the story. "You look exhausted, Max. Today's been a lot for you. Why don't we take the Sheriff up on the ride?"

Max agreed, and soon they were locked in the back seat of the patrol car together, heading back up the street to Isobel's house. Sheriff Valenti talked away at them, updating Max on things that probably would have interested him normally...the latest crime trends in town, the latest meddling from ICE, new local ordinances going into effect. Max did a good job of making interested noises, and once again, Liz found herself impressed at how well he was playing the part with the Sheriff. 

Thankfully, it was only a few minutes before they pulled up in front of Isobel’s house, and Valenti released them from the cruiser. With a final promise to try to come back to work soon, Max and Liz waved goodbye and headed into the house.

Isobel was waiting for them inside, with Michael beside her. At the sight of both of his siblings together, Liz felt Max immediately stiffen up beside her. She slid her hand into his to try to comfort him, and he turned to smile gratefully at her. 

“Max, I know you’re really angry with me, right now,” Isobel started. “And I know you’re not really inclined to trust Michael and I right now...but I asked Michael to come over so that we could talk with you together about it. We know we were wrong to keep so much from you and we want to apologize and make it up to you, if we can.”

~*~*~*~*~ _ Max~*~ _ *~*~*~

Max eyed Michael and Isobel suspiciously for a long moment. Then he turned and looked at Liz. She squeezed his hand and smiled encouragingly, and suddenly he realized that was all he needed. With Liz supporting him, beside him, he could handle anything.

“Okay,” he agreed, and he and Liz made their way into the living room and sat down on the couch across from Michael and Isobel.

“What do you want to know?” Michael asked.

Max considered the question. “I think...what I need to know is the full story about what happened to me. Liz told me the basics, but even she admitted that there were some holes in what she knew. Maybe between the three of you, more of the story can be pieced together?”

“Yeah…” Isobel considered. “That’s not a bad idea.”

“We spent so much time focused on what was wrong with you and how to fix you while you were in the pod that we never really got together and talked about how it all happened,” Liz realized. She sighed heavily and searched the room briefly before confessing her theory to the others. “I’ve been assuming it was my fault all of these months. I think something I did made Max want to heal Rosa for me.”

“No.” Isobel firmly disagreed. She sounded so certain that it surprised Max, and he could even hear Liz audibly react. “It could have contributed, Liz, but it definitely wasn't the sole reason for Max’s choices. The first thing you have to understand is that Max wasn’t himself at all that night. Max channeled an incredible amount of energy that night in order to kill Noah, and it messed with his head.”

“Max killed Noah?” Liz’s voice trembled through the question.

“Yeah,” Isobel confirmed softly. “He didn’t say much about it, and Michael and I only saw the very end, but Max did tell us that Noah made the mistake of telling him that lightning is another type of electricity that he could manipulate with his powers.”

“Noah was too powerful,” Michael confirmed. “When I got to the cave he was physically torturing Max with his powers. It was real rough. Max was in a lot of pain. And Isobel was unconscious. I think Max wanted to do something drastic to recharge his energy to put himself on even ground with Noah, so… lightning.”

“This all makes sense.” Liz considered, raking a hand through her hair as she processed. “Max juiced up on the lightning to kill Noah...which was the most power he had ever channeled. But according to the Project Shepherd studies, killing makes your species even stronger. So killing Noah would have added to the power that he had already pulled from the lightning storm. It must have boosted his power in an unimaginable way. He was probably feeling invincible! And then he came home and we…” she stopped and looked up at Michael and Isobel. Then she turned and looked at Max and flushed.

“We made love.” Max finished for her.

“Yeah,” Liz confirmed, giving him a little smile. And for what it’s worth, I couldn’t tell that anything was wrong with him. He just seemed...happy. The happiest I had ever seen him. It was infectious. He told me that Noah was gone and it just seemed like a weight had been lifted off of him.”

“Michael and I were both struggling with Noah’s death, in different ways.” Isobel explained. “But Max wanted him out of our lives completely. He wanted to move on immediately. Which is why he took off and went home, I think. And unlike us, you were able to feed that desire to move forward.”

“But it’s more than that even.” Liz countered, dragging a frustrated hand through her hair. “I mean, sure, we made love, but I also begged Max to connect with me so that he could feel my feelings for him. I wanted to give that to him, because I didn’t feel like I could say it out loud to him yet. I felt guilty for falling for him, and I felt like I needed to make peace with that guilt...with Rosa...before I could say the words to Max. But he felt that guilt too, all mixed in with the love, through the connection. So he was feeling invincible, in love, and had a fresh understanding of my grief over Rosa.”

“And that’s exactly when we showed him Rosa’s body in Noah’s pod.” Michael groaned. 

“And even though he immediately suggested that he should try to heal Rosa again, we just told him not to and walked away, like we trusted that he’d listen to us.” Isobel spit out. “How stupid were we? We knew that he wasn’t right and still we left him alone.”

“Max, do you understand what this all means?” Liz asked him.

Max considered her question, but it was hard to process everything he had just heard. He already knew that he had brought Liz’s sister back from the dead, but he killed a man? And channeled a lightning storm? He looked down at his hands, studying them closely. They didn’t look like hands that could manipulate life and death. They weren’t blood stained or charred from electrical burns.

He stood and paced the room. “I hear what you’re saying,” he finally told them. “And I believe you. But it’s hard for me to process what these hands are capable of. Especially since I don’t remember any of it.”

Liz nodded and pushed herself to her feet, crossing the room to stand in front of him. She took his hands, threaded her fingers with his, and held their joined hands between them.

“Remember what I told you yesterday? About limitations?”

Max nodded. “You made me promise never to try to resurrect someone again since it almost killed me.”

“I did. But here’s the thing, Max. Based on everything we just learned, it’s even more important that you remember that.” Liz insisted. “Because when you brought Rosa back, you were channeling so much extra power, between the lightning and Noah...and you still almost died.”


	10. Chapter 10

~*~*~*~*~_ Liz~*~ _*~*~*~

With everything out in the open and at least somewhat resolved between Max, Michael, and Isobel, their world settled into a more natural rhythm for a few weeks. Michael and Isobel both did a better job of trying to help prepare Max for the possibility of a life without his memories, each in their own way. Some of those ways, Liz approved of - for instance, Isobel was trying to prepare Max for his first visit to their parents’ house. 

Others, Liz was less than thrilled about, like the day he spent with Michael re-learning how to shoot a gun, and apparently, how to knock back vast quantities of whiskey. Michael apparently decided that Liz was the lesser evil, and brought Max staggering drunk to her instead of Isobel. _Remember that you love him!_ Michael had cracked as he shoved Max through the front door and quickly took off, ignoring Liz’s protests. After an eventful evening of playing dodge-the-drunk with a starry-eyed alien who wanted to connect with her to share how incredible it felt to be drunk, Max passed out on the couch and Liz slipped back to his room to crawl into bed on her own.

Liz, meanwhile, continued to try to teach him to read when they were alone together. She convinced Isobel that Max’s house was the right place to hold reading lessons due to his vast library, plus it had the added benefit in resulting in a few more memory flashes now and then. 

So far his memories had been limited to particularly intense or emotional moments. He remembered crying to his mother after Isobel went into the pod...fighting with Michael over how to deal with Noah. He had flashed to Isobel’s wedding, and to a particularly nasty argument at the junkyard with Michael, right as their relationship was falling apart after high school.

Each memory felt like a victory to Max, but they remained bits and pieces of his life, like remnants of a story. He had dramatic moments from his life, but none of the plot in between to string those moments together. He didn’t have the background and history, all of the little things that helped Max become the man he grew into. 

For all that Max still looked like her Max, and sounded more and more like her Max with each passing day, Liz couldn’t help still noticing that childlike innocence in him that Max normally just didn’t have. It was a certain naivety that came with a lack of experience and history, a lack of heartbreak. He simply carried himself in a free and easy way, like he felt none of the weight stacked on his shoulders that he had been living with all of his life. 

It was both equally endearing and heartbreaking, all at once. It was like getting a glimpse into who Max could have been without the trauma, guilt, and heartbreak that had been so formative in securing his adult identity. This Max smiled more, laughed more. This Max accepted that he was forced to be reliant on others due to his situation, and so, this Max didn’t feel the responsibility of leadership, of being the protector, the one who had to take care of his family. 

Liz found this freer Max to be incredibly compelling. It reminded her of the day they made love. She had never seen him smile so brightly before that day. 

And then, of course, thinking about that day made her burn for him. Four months in the pod, and now three months of helping him try to find his way back to himself...it had now been more than half a year since she had last kissed him, let alone since they had made love. Her body ached from the effort of keeping that physical distance away from him, when all she wanted to do was touch him.

Her mind was churning over these changes in Max, running through ideas to potentially help increase the strength of his memory triggers, as she distractedly wandered from the Crashdown at the end of her shift that day. She thought back to the antidote that she had made for Isobel, and how it had triggered memory flashes through the repair of damaged brain cells for Max’s sister. When Max was still incubating in the pod, they had tried giving him some antidote to see if it would help him heal, but it hadn’t seemed to do anything for him. Liz found herself wondering if a dose of it might help repair whatever remained broken inside of his head now.

She was considering what the appropriate dosage might be when she headed to her car, across the street. 

In her distraction, she wasn’t prepared for the pickup truck that came barreling around the traffic circle towards her. As the truck slammed into her body, and Liz flew into the air, the last thought that crossed her mind was a mental scream for Max. 

After that, there was only darkness.

~*~*~*~*~_ Max~*~ _*~*~*~

There was something in the air that day. Max wasn’t really sure what it was, but it left him feeling nervous, unsettled. He constantly felt like he needed to get up and pace around the house. It was like he was waiting, on edge, for a storm to pass through Roswell.

Max knew something was happening the instant Isobel answered her phone. He couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but she immediately seemed concerned over whatever she was hearing, and kept glancing up at him as the voice on the other end spoke. When she ended the call she turned her full attention to him. 

“What?” Max demanded. “What's wrong, Isobel?”

“Max, I need you to stay calm. Try to keep yourself steady...don’t lose control of your powers or anything over this, okay?”

“Tell me, Isobel!” Max insisted.

“It’s Liz…she’s in the hospital.” His heart started pounding at her words, and he felt the panic rising inside of him. He desperately tried to push it down, to stay levelheaded, as Isobel continued. “Michael says that she was hit by a car in front of the Crashdown. The guy came out of nowhere when she was crossing the street. She hit her head pretty badly and was unconscious when the ambulance took her away. Max, I’m sure she’s gonna be okay though.”

“I need to go to the hospital,” Max insisted, his voice distant even to his own ears. “I need to be there for her.”

“You can’t heal her, Max. Not now that she’s been hospitalized.”

“I know. I won’t. But I can’t leave her there alone. Please, take me to her, Iz.”

This time his sister didn’t argue and a few minutes later they were in the car on their way to the hospital. Max’s heart still pounded with fear and worry for Liz, and now it was compounded by a steady pulsing pain in his head too. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temple, trying to regain his equilibrium. But Liz was hit by a car, and in his mind he kept hearing the sound of screeching tires, the crumpling of metal, and the smell of burning flesh… Rosa Ortecho’s burning flesh.

_ Rosa _…

“Iz, someone needs to tell Rosa.” Max suddenly realized. “Michael wouldn’t think to call her...Kyle would, but he’s probably at the hospital. Make sure she knows after you drop me off, okay.”

“I will,” Isobel promised. She pulled up in front of the hospital and Max quickly jumped from the car. “Max!” Isobel called after him. He turned and looked back to her. “Be careful, okay.”

He nodded his agreement and then turned to rush into the facility. He barely made it through the double doors, when suddenly a sharp pain shot through his head, so powerful that it caused him to double over. Beneath the pain he could feel panic for Liz’s safety...not from this accident, but from a...shooter? He had to get to her lab, make sure she was okay. He couldn’t lose her...not when he just finally got her. It had only been a few hours since she kissed him… A shot rang out… and then another. He yelled for her to get down, but he was too late. She was unconscious and a bullet had pierced her chest, just above her heart, blood trailing across her collarbone...and she had just come back after he had spent _ ten years _ waiting for her. He couldn’t lose her now. He gathered his energy without a second thought, placed his hand over her heart, and pushed his power into her, disintegrating the bullet, and carefully stitching her broken body back together again until the only sign that anything had happened was the three bullet holes, two in the windows of the Crashdown Cafe, and one in Liz’s uniform, right over her heart. The same heart that he touched later to reveal to her how he had loved her since the first time he saw her… The same heart he laid his hand over when she begged him to show her his memories of her sister and he just couldn’t say no, even though he knew it could very well destroy him. The same heart that his hand gently covered as he connected their minds while they were making love for the first time, because she begged him to, because she wanted him to feel that heart...and he did, and it was the most incredible feeling that he had ever experienced...her love, washing over him…

And then somehow with her love, his own feelings came rushing back through him, two decades..his entire lifetime...loving her. Childhood adoration, growing into the embarrassing wet dreams of his pubescent years, to high school when he could hide it better, because to everyone else it just looked like a typical teenage crush, even though he knew…he _ somehow just knew _… she would always be the only one for him, and he would do anything for her if she asked, including changing his entire life plan to follow her around the country for a summer. 

And then she was gone. And he was alone. Waiting for what felt like an eternity for her to come back home. His broken heart aching for her.

Max gasped in a wild breath. His head was pounding, overloaded from the electric rush of memory surging back to life inside of him. He tried to shake his head clear enough to keep moving towards the emergency wing of the hospital, where Liz was being held, because she needed him. 

He wrenched his eyes open, took a deep breath, and made his way to the emergency room. In the waiting room, Arturo and Maria sat together, Maria holding Liz’s father’s hands comfortingly. But they both looked worried, tense…

“Max!” Maria exclaimed at the sight of him. 

“How is she?” he asked, searching Maria’s face for any sign that he should be panicking.

“Liz is in surgery,” Arturo reported. “They’re setting her broken bones and relieving pressure on her brain...the concussion left her brain too swollen...I don’t quite understand it all. Kyle is with her. He will let us know how she’s doing when he can.”

Max nodded, and crumpled into a chair across from them, his aching head dropping into his hands again. 

“Where have you been, Max?” His head shot up at Maria’s question.

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Max. No one has seen you in months. You haven’t been working. You haven’t been by the Pony at all…”

“I haven’t seen you at the Crashdown. And you always come to the Crashdown.” Arturo added in. 

Max nodded, rubbing his eyes. “I’ve been unwell,” he explained lamely. “So I took extended medical leave from work. I haven’t been out of the house much.”

“You seem like you’re doing better,” Arturo observed.

Max nodded, “Mostly. Except for this damn headache I can’t kick.” He rubbed his temples again, trying to soothe the pain. “I think I’m on the mend. Liz has really been helping me heal.”

“That must have been one hell of a hangover, cowboy,” Maria teased with a smirk.

Max smiled back, amused. “You could say that.”

They were interrupted by another figure frantically bursting into the waiting room. Rosa was burning with energy as always, hurrying straight up to them. “What happened? Is Liz okay? What’s going on,” she demanded. Max blinked distantly at her, feeling unnaturally stunned at the sight of her. He had just seen her a few days earlier, of course, but now he was seeing her through eyes that remembered her ten years dead, that remembered the feeling his hands on her body as he tried to revive her, both the time that he failed, and later when he succeeded. 

She felt like a miracle standing in front of him. 

“Max!” Rosa exclaimed, pulling his focus back to the present, where Rosa was waiting for answers, and Maria and Arturo were both staring at Rosa like she was a ghost...which to them, she was.

“Rosa, Liz is in surgery. We’re waiting for an update from Kyle.” He turned his attention to Maria and Arturo. “So, Rosa’s back in the land of the living. She’s been hiding out at my house with Liz while they try to figure out how to explain her reappearance. We should have told you, I’m sorry you had to find out like this.”

“_ Mija _, is it really you?” Arturo wondered, as tears filled his eyes.

“It’s me, _ Papi. _” Rosa confirmed. “I’m here.” She flung herself across the open space between them and into her father’s arms. The two of them held each other tightly, their bodies shaking as they cried happily. 

When they finally pulled apart, Arturo had one hand on Rosa’s cheek, studying his daughter’s face. “It’s like you haven’t aged a day since I saw you last.” 

Rosa pulled away, and reached for Maria, hugging her friend tightly. Maria seemed still in shock though, stuck on Arturo’s last comment. “No, he’s right. You look exactly the same, but it’s been 10 years. How is this possible?”

Max rubbed his throbbing temples again, eyes closed, and he felt movement beside him as Rosa sat down beside him. He peeked his eyes open slightly. Rosa had a concerned look on her face as she studied him. “What do you want me to say?” She asked him softly.

Max reached over and squeezed her hand comfortingly. “Don’t worry,” he said. “At least it’ll give us something to talk about while we wait for Liz.”

Glancing around the waiting room, Max quickly figured out a plan. There was a private small family waiting room off to the side of the nurse’s station. He pointed it out to Rosa, and she led Maria and Arturo there while Max notified them nurses of their changed location for any updates of Liz’s condition. Then he followed them into the room and closed the door behind him.

“Max, what’s going on? Why are you being so secretive?” Maria asked.

“It’s best if this isn’t something that becomes common knowledge,” Max explained. “It could make my life very...dangerous...if the wrong people were to learn any of this. Because Rosa _ was _ dead for a decade. And then I brought her back from the dead.”

“But Max, that’s impossible,” Maria argued.

“Your evidence is sitting right there next to you,” Max pointed out.

“But...how?” Arturo asked.

Max looked down at his hands, before awkwardly shoving them into his pockets. He continued to linger by the door, not quite wanting to get comfortable until he knew how this conversation was going to go.

“Because I’m not human.” Max explained, his eyes focused on the wall opposite him, above everyone’s heads, since he couldn’t bring himself to look any of them in the eye. “I’m an alien...I was in the 1947 UFO crash when I was just a kid. I survived because I was protected in some kind of stasis pod, and I stayed in stasis for 50 years until I woke up in 1997, still just an 8-year-old alien kid. I was adopted and raised like a normal human kid...the only difference being that I never get sick. And I can heal people with my hands.”

“And that was how you brought Rosa back to us?”

“I came across her body, preserved in a pod similar to mine. There was another alien here in Roswell who was not a good guy. He killed a bunch of people, including Rosa. But he was obsessed with Rosa, so he kept her all of these years. I found her not long after I fought him and won. And when I saw Rosa’s body, I just… I had to try. For Liz.”

“And it worked,” Maria breathed in awe.

“It worked,” Max confirmed. “But it nearly killed me. I had to go back into the pod to heal for months, which is why none of you have seen me in a while. When I finally woke up again, it was like my entire brain had been powered down and needed to be booted back up again. I've had amnesia for the past few months, so I hid out at my sister’s house trying to find myself again. My memory literally just returned...this afternoon.”

“Months…” Arturo mumbled, shaking his head. “Rosa, why didn’t you come to see me?”

“Liz wouldn’t let me,” Rosa explained, the frustration evident in her voice. “I wanted to. Believe me. Liz never heard the end of how much I wanted to. But I think she wanted to wait until Max was better, so that he could weigh in on who and what we tell people about me.” 

“I’m sorry.” Max burst out. “She should have told you. I appreciate that she was thinking of me, but I did an impulsive thing that impacted all of you. And I was gone. She should have spent more time focusing on you all, and less time trying to help me heal.”

“Max. Look at me,” Arturo insisted. Max sighed. He had still been avoiding eye contact. All of this honesty about himself and his past was not a conversation he was used to having. It felt like pulling nails for him to drag his eyes from the wall, down to where Arturo was sitting. Once he met Liz’s father’s eyes, Arturo held his gaze firmly, and Max felt like he was he was standing there, exposed before Liz’s family. 

“Max, you have strong feelings for my daughter, don’t you.” It was a statement, not a question, but Max decided to answer regardless.

“I love her,” he simply answered. Arturo nodded, accepting Max’s confession.

“I always suspected that you cared for my daughter, but I can see that I underestimated the strength of those feelings.” Max nodded, not really sure how to respond. “Thank you, Max. Thank you for bringing Rosa back to us.”

A gentle knocking on the door pulled their attention, and Kyle peeked in his head into the room.

“Kyle!” Rosa cried out, and rushed over to hug her brother. Max shook his head at the sight of them together. He hadn’t been aware of the truth of Rosa’s parentage when he healed her. It was something that he had only learned about while he wasn’t well. Now, the impact of seeing them together, with the understanding of the history between the two families, hit him like a punch in the gut. 

“How is she,” Maria asked.

“She’s out of surgery,” Kyle reported. “Still unconscious though, and she might be for a while yet. The surgery took care of the lingering worries about her concussion and the potential for brain damage, but she still has a number of broken bones and other internal injuries. It’s going to be a long road ahead of her to heal. And she’s gonna need all of us to help.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Max asked. He and Kyle held each other’s gaze seriously for a long moment, Kyle seeming to wonder how much he could say, while Max nodded, urging him to continue.

“Not as long as she’s in the hospital,” Kyle told him. “Too dangerous. Once she’s home though, absolutely. I’ll do everything I can do to get her discharged as soon as it’s safe.”

“Thank you, Kyle,” Arturo replied.

“I’ll be back once she’s out of post-op and transferred to her recovery room. After that, you can go in and be with her.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long delay y'all. The real life has been blowing up and I've been struggling to wrap up the end of this story. But I'm nearly there so I decided it's past time to feed the starving Echo masses. Or at least the dozen of us that are shouting for content. Hope you enjoy!!

~*~*~*~*~ _ Liz~*~ _ *~*~*~

She acknowledged the pain before she even knew that she was awake. It was her first conscious thought. Her head throbbed, her chest felt like it was being stabbed with each breath she took...really she just hurt from head to toe.

Once she realized that she was awake, all she wanted to do was go back to sleep. When she was asleep, she didn’t notice how everything hurt. She liked that much better than this. 

She didn’t think she made a noise, but she must have, because she heard a voice cry out, “Did you hear that? She groaned. Is she awake?” That’s when she realized that there was a hand holding hers. She tried to squeeze it, so that whoever was there knew that she was okay. 

“Mija, it’s okay. Open your eyes.”

Her father’s voice...he sounded so afraid. Liz hated the idea that he was afraid. Her Papi had suffered so much already.

But opening her eyes felt too hard. Her eyelids felt as heavy as a sandbag, weighing down to keep her in the darkness. This time, she knew that she groaned as she tried to open them with all of the effort she had in her. It felt like a victory when she flinched, blinded by the sliver of light when she first peeked her eyes open and shut them again. The light made her head pound even more. She groaned, louder this time.

“Come on, Lizzie...Open your eyes and give me hell. I know how much you hate it when I call you Lizzie,” it was Rosa’s voice, teasing her. Rosa… and her father… together. Only with that startling revelation did Liz begin to understand that she was in the hospital. And her family was waiting for her to wake up. That’s why her papi sounded so scared...she was the one who scared him.

She tried again to open her eyes, but again the brightness blinded her, causing her to squeeze them back shut again.

“Ow,” she groaned, lamely. Her first coherent word.

“Liz?” Rosa again. 

“Too bright,” Liz moaned, and she heard rustling in response.

“Okay, the light is out,” Rosa’s voice promised. “Try again?” 

This time, Liz succeeded in wrenching her eyes open, looking up at her father and sister’s worried faces hovering above her.

“Hi,” she mumbled. They looked absolutely thrilled by her lame greeting.

“How do you feel?” Papi asked her.

“Like I’ve been run over by a truck,” Liz mumbled.

“Not a truck...just a regular sized car.” It was Kyle’s voice that dryly cut in.

“Kyle,” she murmured. “You’re here.”

“Of course,” Kyle promised. “I’ve gotta keep an eye on my VIP patient, after all.”

“What happened to me?”

“You really were hit by a car,” Rosa insisted. “Right in front of the Crashdown, so dad was right there with you when the ambulance came.”

“We had to rush you into surgery to reduce pressure on your brain. It was successful, you’re going to be fine. You also have a few broken ribs, which are impacting your lungs and breathing, and a broken leg and shoulder. We’ve done everything  _ humanly _ possible for your broken bones, if you know what I mean. Now it’s just a matter of managing your pain and healing. We’ll be monitoring your progress and try to get you out of here as quickly as possible.”

“Thanks, Kyle.”

Kyle glanced across Liz to meet Rosa’s eyes, and nodded to her as they had a silent exchange. “I’m going to leave you with your family for now. I have other patients to check on. But I’ll swing by the waiting room and let Max and Maria know you’re awake. Only two guests are allowed in at a time, but I know they’re antsy to see you.”

“Max is here?” Liz asked. “Ohhh...he must be so worried.”

“Maria is too,” Rosa pointed out. “They’ve both been here with us the whole time. Max is the one who sent Isobel to get me here.”

"I'm glad he did," Liz admitted. She turned her attention to her father. "I'm so sorry that I kept her a secret from you. There were...reasons. It was complicated."

"Don't you worry about that right now," her father insisted. "You just focus on getting healthy."

A soft knock on the door interrupted them. Rosa went to see who it was. At the sight of Max following her sister into the room, Liz's eyes locked onto his. Her expectation was correct...he looked so afraid, so worried about her. There was something else there too...something Liz couldn't quite interpret. Whatever it was mesmerized her though, as he took slow, even steps towards her.

"Come on, Papi...let's give them a minute," Liz distantly heard her sister say, before her family disappeared from the room. Then she and Max were alone.

He slid into the chair that her father had vacated, and leaned over her to press his lips to the back of her hand. She slid her hand from his lips, up to his forehead and down the back of his bowed head, stroking her fingers lightly through his hair. She felt him tremble beneath her touch. When he audibly released a heartbreaking moan while sucking in a shaky breath, she realized that he was crying. 

"Oh, Max…" she murmured, continuing to try to comfort him as she ran her hand through his hair, rubbing the back of his neck. She made soothing noises, trying to assure him that she was okay, until finally the tremors began to slow.

He finally looked up, his red, bloodshot eyes meeting hers. "Liz, I am so sorry. For everything. For leaving you, the one thing I swore I'd never do. For how hard it's been for you all this time. For not being there to save you today. I'm just…I'm so sorry."

Liz felt her heart skip a beat.  _ Did that mean… _ . “Max?” She asked him hesitantly.

“Yeah. It’s me. I’m back.”

“You are?” Liz asked hopefully. 

“I am.”

“Prove it.” Liz begged. “Tell me something you wouldn’t have been able to tell me yesterday.”

Max nodded and fell silent for a moment. Then, finally, he told her a story. “Fifth grade. It was your 10th birthday party at the Crashdown and you invited our entire class. It was Harry Potter themed...butterbeer milkshakes and all that. You wore your hair all frizzy like Hermione and made sure to carefully pronounce all of the spells properly. Isobel complained endlessly because Mom made her go to the party and she thought Harry Potter was childish. I wore fake glasses and drew a lightning bolt on my head, and my sister picked on me the whole next week for it. I gave you a Gryffindor scarf as a present. You wore it to school the very next time that it snowed. Every time you wore it I couldn’t stop staring at you, which I guess wasn’t all that unusual.” He paused awkwardly shrugged his shoulders. “I was already so in love with you.”

“I remember that party,” Liz said with a grin. “But we’ve never talked about it before. I still have that scarf, you know. I found it when I was clearing Rosa’s stuff out of our room last year.”

Max smiled, and ducked his head down shyly, which made Liz absolutely crazy. “Max will you please get over here and kiss me?” She pleaded. 

His eyes burned with love, as he stood and leaned over the rail of her hospital bed to give her everything she asked for. He kissed her firmly, but didn’t linger, since she was in the hospital after all. It was somewhat chaste, but it gave Max an opportunity to say a proper hello to her. To say I’m sorry for hurting you, and I’ll make it up to you. 

But Liz felt him say something else. Liz felt him say I love you. She felt a promise for passion to come once she was healed and well enough for it. And it reminded her that she made herself a promise to tell him something as soon as she could say it, as soon as he could hear it with their history intact in his memory. Once he could understand how important it was for her to say.

“Max, I love you.” He stared at her in shock, which was amusing to Liz because it wasn’t like he didn’t know. They talked about it while his memory was gone. But she needed to say it to him properly, for him to hear it and know it was true. “I’ve been waiting a really long time to say that to you.” She told him.

He kissed her again, this time lingering a little longer, as he softly pressed his lips to hers again, and again. “I love you too.” He finally told her, as he pulled away, and collapsed with a goofy smile back into the hospital chair. “God, I love you so much.”

~*~*~*~*~ _ Max~*~ _ *~*~*~

Max paced nervously back and forth, watching the front windows and waiting for the Ortechos to arrive. He checked the path from the front door to the bedroom again, trying to make sure he had cleared enough space, obstacle free for Liz’s wheelchair. He scanned the living room too, double checking that he had spaced the furniture out appropriately for her needs.

He was shocked to win the argument with Arturo over where the best place for Liz to recover from her injuries were. Arturo wanted her to come home to the Crashdown, to move back into her old bedroom. After all, it was in the middle of town and had easy access to the hospital and doctors. But the apartment over the Crashdown was just that: an upstairs apartment. With her injuries, it would be impossible for Liz to climb up and downstairs, and so she’d be trapped in the apartment once she was home. So even though Max’s house was on the outskirts of town, Arturo had to eventually give in and admit that the flatness of his house made it a better recovery location. 

Plus, Max was able to make the point that between his healing abilities, and Kyle’s willingness to make house calls for Liz, ease of access to the hospital wasn’t really a driving factor for Liz’s recovery. The less appointments she had the better, that way the speed of her recovery wouldn’t be well tracked. Plus he had spoken to Sheriff Valenti, and planned to stay on his long term leave of absence to help Liz with her recovery. 

So after spending the better part of the last week at the hospital with the Ortechos, Max hurried home to prepare. He filled the refrigerator with groceries, set up his bed with fresh sheets and pillows for her, cleared out some space to make navigating the house easier for her, and made a spare key to give to Arturo, so that her father could come visit her anytime. Now he was just waiting for her to arrive.

Max was relieved to see the dust cloud approaching on the dirt road, and soon Liz’s SUV appeared, Arturo behind the wheel and Rosa in the passenger seat. They pulled up to the house, and Rosa leapt from the car to run around to the trunk and pull the wheelchair out, readying it for Liz. Max hurried out to the car and opened the backseat door for Liz. 

“May I?” He asked, and once she nodded her consent he bent to allow her to grip him, her arm around his shoulder. He slid an arm under her knees, and another supporting her back, and carefully lifted her from the car. As he turned to place her in the wheelchair, their eyes met, and the closeness of her face caused him to pause and stare. She lowered her chin and pressed a light kiss to his lips. 

“You probably could have used your shiny new powers to do this.” She reminded him. “It’d be easier on your back.”

He laughed. “I don’t mind carrying you,” he told her. “I like helping you the old fashioned way when I can.”

“My hero,” she murmured, kissing him again.

As Rosa wheeled Liz into the house, Max turned his attention to Arturo. He passed the new house key to Arturo and quietly told him, "Come by anytime."

Arturo looked surprised, at first, by the gesture. But his surprised softened into a smile, as he shook Max's hand. "Thank you." 

They both turned to follow Rosa and Liz inside. Rosa had already wheeled Liz directly to the master bedroom, and was in the process of pulling down the sheets and propping up the pillows just right for Liz's comfort. Once she was done, she stepped aside so that Max could help Liz into the bed. 

"How long does she have until her next check in at the hospital?" Max asked cautiously.

"Kyle will make a house call in about a week. She has to see the other doctor in 2 weeks." Arturo explained.

"Perfect." Max responded. He sat next to Liz on the edge of the bed and turned to her, sliding his hand slightly beneath her shirt to cover her heart. His hand aligned with the same spot where he had marked her twice before. Once when he saved her life for the first time, and then again, months later, when he made love to her for the first time. He closed his eyes and concentrated, seeking the location of her broken ribs and using his energy to pull them back into place, welding the bones back together with his mind. Once he was satisfied with his repair, he sought out the associated damage to her lungs and healed those wounds, before turning his attention to her brain. He wanted to heal any and all damage to her brain tissue, while leaving the surface wound still visible for the doctor to examine. It was difficult to piecemeal out the damages from the accident versus the associated surgery, but he focused and managed to complete his task.

He was breathing heavily from the effort, as he opened his eyes and slid his hand away, breaking their connection. Liz was staring at him, eyes wide, in amazement. She shook her head and grinned at him.

"It's such a weird sensation, feeling my body being repaired like that."

"How do you feel?" He asked.

"A whole lot better than I did 5 minutes ago. Thank you, Max." Liz reached out and cupped his cheek with her uninjured hand, and Max leaned into her touch for a moment, before turning his head to kiss her hand. Then he stood, stepping away from her to clear his head. 

He turned to see Arturo and Rosa watching him closely.

"What did you do?" Arturo finally asked. "Your hand was glowing!"

"I just healed what I could for her. Most of her internal injuries are gone now. It's just the surface injuries that the hospital will be tracking that are left. She should be feeling a lot better now."

"I am," Liz confirmed. “I’m not running a marathon anytime soon, but I can finally breathe without it hurting. And my head feels less fuzzy than it has in days.”

“Perfect,” Rosa exclaimed. “Now Papi, you spend some time with Liz while Max helps me pack up my things.” She turned to Max and Liz. “I’m going to move back in with Papi. Give you two some space now that you’re back together again.”

“You don’t have to,” Max protested, but Rosa quickly hushed him.

“Did you like hanging around with your sister and her ex-husband when they were all romantic and stuff?”

Max cringed, both at the thought of Noah, and of the memory of the rare occasions that they teased him by talking about their sex life in front of him. “Point taken.” He agreed.

Once Rosa’s things were loaded into Arturo’s car, the two Ortechos said their goodbyes to an increasingly sleepy Liz. By the time Max returned to the bedroom after seeing Liz off, she had already drifted off to sleep. Max smiled at the sight of her, peacefully at rest in his -  _ their _ \- bed. 

He walked around to the empty side of the bed, untying his boots, and slipping off his jeans and his shirt, before sliding onto the bed beside her. He lay on his side, watching her steady, peaceful breathing, until he too slipped into a restful oblivion, a slight smile on his lips.


	12. Chapter 12

~*~*~*~*~ _ Liz~*~ _ *~*~*~

It had been six weeks since she had left the hospital. Six weeks of living with  _ her _ Max, his memories intact and his mind blissfully sharp again. Six weeks of sharing his bed. Six weeks of sleeping beside each other.

Six weeks of sweet kisses, words of devotion, and feeling absolutely cherished by him.

Six weeks of yearning, hunger, and unfulfilled desires, because while she was healing, her chivalrous, cautious man refused to fuck her.

Liz loved him to pieces and wanted to strangle him.

Of course while she had her leg in the cast, there were certainly logistical challenges. They tried fooling around once or twice early on, but between her leg and her busted shoulder, it left her in a sufficient enough amount of pain to scare Max off of trying again.

But it was getting ridiculous now. Max had used his abilities to heal her as subtly as he could get away with. As a result, she met all of the minimum recovery times with flying colors, and a few days earlier she had gotten her casts removed. She was supposed to be in physical therapy now, but there was no need thanks to Max's powers, so Kyle and Alex were helping to fabricate those records. 

Liz was fully healed, felt strong and ready. But Max was still treating her like she was made of glass.

She'd had enough of caution. It was time to force the issue.

Max had gone back to work at the beginning of the week, relieved to be allowed back on the force after nearly a full year of leave. He was coming home from his shift soon, and the next day would be his first day off since going back to work. Liz had subtly ensured that their schedules were cleared, and threatened everyone to stay away lest she need to show her wrath.

As evening came, Liz wandered through the house, lighting the fireplaces and candles. She went to their room and pulled out one of Max's favorite button down shirts. She fingered the collar thoughtfully, remembering how he wore it the day of their first kiss, after coming home with Isobel and changing. That day had been such an incredible turning point in their relationship. They kissed in the early morning light for the first time, brought his sister back from the brink of death, and by that evening, Max had saved her life again by helping her escape from the hospital shooter.

That day was actually the second time that Liz had been terrified for Max's life. But it was the first time that she really understood what she was feeling. Fear of losing a person that she loved.

A fear that came to pass only a few days later, when Max died bringing Rosa back to life.

Liz shook the thought away. It was ancient history now. Both Max and Rosa were alive and thriving and there was nothing more to worry about.

Which is why she was determined to break through Max’s own fear of hurting her. It was time for them to begin their normal, happy life together. 

~*~*~*~*~ _ Max~*~ _ *~*~*~

He could see the flickering light from the candles dancing in the windows when he pulled up to the house in his Jeep that evening. 

He smiled, and the stress of the week slid off of his shoulders. It was Friday, and his first week back at work had been long and exhausting.

But this. This was one of the new joys of his life. Coming home to a warm, inviting house full of love. Liz's love. Living with Liz made the harder parts of his life more tolerable. Coming home to her was everything.

He leapt from the Jeep and sauntered to the front door. Idly he wondered if she would be okay with him just grabbing her and kissing her instead of saying hello? He tried not to be demanding with his love for her, and ever since that one night when they tried to fool around but he just kept hurting her instead, he had been keeping his distance, waiting for a sure sign from her that she was ready for something more. Watching her suffer in pain after the accident was almost more than he could take. Being the source of pain that one night was unbearable. 

He unlocked the door and let himself into the house. 

He froze. Blinked. His brain went dumb and jaw dropped wide open at the sight of her. And he was instantly hard.

Liz was standing there waiting for him, leaning against the bar. Wearing what appeared to be nothing, except one of his button down flannel shirts. She had the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and just two buttons fastened over her midriff, so that the neck was low and almost gaping, covering her breasts, but only just barely.

"Welcome home, cowboy." she greeted him in a seductively playful voice. 

He was dumbstruck.

She smirked at him and then turned to the bar, pulling the cork out of his bottle of good bourbon, and pouring a drink. She held it out to him and only then did it occur to him that he was still standing in the open doorway. 

Within seconds he was inside the warm house, the door closed behind him, and he had made his way to stand in front of her. 

His hand trembled as he reached for the glass in her hand. He almost dropped it when his fingers brushed against hers. He knocked back the first drink quickly. She poured him a second and then put the bottle to her lips and took her own drink. 

Max felt a surge, but it wasn't followed by the typical flickering lights and blowing out of appliances. He looked around in surprise.

"Oh, I unplugged everything." Liz told him nonchalantly. "Figured we can't afford to be constantly replacing the lightbulbs."

She reached for his belt and gave it a tug, pulling him even closer to her. He knocked back the second drink and put the glass aside. After all, he wasn't thirsty for the bourbon. It was only her. So he leaned down and kissed her, drinking in his fill.

When she needed air, Liz pulled back just a bit, her lips barely free of his. 

"I want you." Liz told him firmly. "Quite badly." Her hand slid from his belt buckle, just a little bit lower sending an electric charge surging through his whole body. "And I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual."

"Understatement." Max gasped out. "Bedroom please, otherwise I'm gonna fuck you right here against this counter, and I'm not sure that's the best way for this to go. I need about a minute to, uh, ready myself?"

"Sure." Liz agreed, pulling her hands from his body and taking a step backwards. "If that's what you need." 

Another step back from him, but her eyes stayed locked with his. "Just…" she took another step, "...don't…" and another step… "...take too long."

She paused just before entering the hallway and slowly, deliberately, reached down to unfasten the buttons holding his shirt in place over her skin. His eyes fell from hers to watch as the flannel fell, still loosely covering her, but no longer leaving much to the imagination. 

His heart was racing.

"I'll be waiting." Liz told him with a grin, before she disappeared into their bedroom. 

He cursed under his breath as his fingers fumbled to unfasten his gun and holster. He slipped his jacket from his shoulders and unceremoniously tossed it in the general direction of the couch, before wrenching his boots off his feet and tossing them towards the front door.

He began fumbling with the buttons on his uniform shirt as he hurried towards the bedroom.

Max stalled in the bedroom doorway at the sight of her, laying in the center of the bed on her side, head propped up on her hand, as she waited. She hadn't removed his shirt yet, but it still covered her, just barely. He tugged his shirt off of his shoulders, and threw it in the corner.

Without saying a word, but keeping his heated eyes focused on her, he quickly removed his pants and socks, all in one motion. And then his t-shirt joined them in the corner.

"That's more like it," Liz approved with a smile. "Now, come here."

"Whatever you want," Max replied softly, before crossing the distance between them and joining her on the bed. He kissed her, softly at first, but as his hand slid under the flannel fabric covering her shoulder, feeling the softness of her bare skin, the kiss quickly deepened into something much hungrier. 

His hand wandered her body, from her shoulder, down to her heart, which felt like it was beating in rhythm with his own. From her heart it took a light, tentative journey over her breast, and down to her stomach, where it paused, splayed across her belly. But then she trembled, and a low, needy moan escaped from her throat. The sound of it echoed from her body into his, causing him to shiver right down into his own gut...and he instantly knew that taking this slow wasn't going to be an option. 

He peeled his shirt from her body, haphazardly tossing it away. She pushed his shorts down his hips, just far enough that he could wiggle them the rest of the way down his legs and off his body.

Everything he sensed from her told him that she was ready for him, but he reached between them to check anyway, just to be sure, before he positioned himself and pushed his way inside of her.

Liz made the most delicious breathy sound as he entered her. He bowed his head, leaning his forehead against hers as he looked into her eyes, breathing in the scent of her as they leaned nose to nose. He was addicted. He couldn't resist her. One hand cupped her face, stoking her cheek gently as he moved within her. His other hand locked fingers with hers, palm to palm, a holy kiss, just like Shakespeare described. 

And Max completely surrendered to the moment, to the incredible pleasure, to the joy that was exploding from his heart. She was  _ his _ savior...it didn't matter what his role in this universe was. He didn't believe in destiny or fate. He believed in her, in Liz, completely. And he would happily worship at the altar of her love until the day he died.

~*~*~*~*~ _ Liz~*~ _ *~*~*~

Liz was surprised to wake at dawn to find herself alone in the bed. 

She sat up and surveyed the room. The fire in the corner looked freshly churned, but as she slid her hand over Max’s empty space, the sheets weren’t warm. He had been up for a while.

She stretched, yawned, and slid naked from the bed. Glancing at the mirror, she could see the shimmer of a newly formed handprint on her chest and she smiled, slipping her hand to cover it. She lazily padded out to the hallway and glanced at the couch, and then in the kitchen. No Max. 

Then she looked to the front windows, and there he was. She could see his silhouette in the light from the sunrise. He was sitting in one of the chairs by the fire pit, staring off in the distance. Liz made her way back to the bedroom, and slipped into a pair of leggings and an oversized sweater. She slipped her feet into a pair of fuzzy boots, and made her way out to him.

A few feet away from him, she paused, studying the look on his face. He looked so sad, worried...like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. All she wanted in the world was to comfort him...to chase that frown away until it never came back again. But she could feel the war rumbling around inside of him through the handprint, and she sensed that he might just need an ear. So Liz sat in the chair beside his, and they just silently watched the sunrise together for a while.

As the colors began to fade to blue, Max finally spoke.

“I’m sorry for leaving you. I couldn’t sleep.”

"It's okay." Liz told him. She studied his face for a moment, looking for something resembling peace, but it wasn't there. "What's going on, Max? What's bothering you."

"I've been using you." Max confessed. Liz sucked in a breath, shocked by his words. She felt how worried he was at her reaction, and he quickly backpedaled, "As a distraction! To avoid thinking about some things that I don't want to think about. I've been doing it since that day, I think. When we first made love, Rosa, everything that happened after that...and then you being hurt since I got my memory back. But now that you're all better, I don't think I can keep avoiding these things."

"What is it, Max?" Liz pushed. "Tell me."

He was quiet for a moment, like he was gathering his thoughts. 

"I had a little bit of time alone with Noah, before I killed him."

"Right." Liz mused. "Michael said Noah was torturing you when he arrived at the cave."

"Yeah." Max confirmed. "That sadistic fuck used his powers to turn my own body against me. He twisted my intestines. He gave me a heart attack. He said...he didn't care if I was mostly dead, as long as I was still alive when they arrived."

"Oh, Max!" Liz cried. "That's awful."

"It'll be fine." Max insisted. "Its that latter part that worries me. He was absolutely certain that more aliens would come for me sometime in the future...maybe sometime soon."

Max turned to look at her and Liz was shocked to see a wild, scared look in Max's eyes. She'd never seen that expression on his face before. She wondered if it was similar to how he looked when he healed her when she was shot. 

"I told him that they wouldn't come for me if they hadn't already. I'm nobody. But Noah… he said I'm wrong." It felt like Max ripped his eyes away from hers, as he stared back out at the brightening sky. "He said...well, he implied that I'm like some Jesus-like figure to our home planet and that they were just waiting for me to grow up and then whoever won the war on our home planet will come looking for me."

"Max…" Liz gasped. She was trying to wrap her mind around what he was telling her. He was Max. She had also known him almost her entire life. The idea of him being some religious figure was almost laughable. 

Of course she found him extraordinary. She loved him. But she loved him as just a man. She loved him in spite of his imperfections. She knew how much he overworked himself trying to appease his guilt. She knew that he felt like he needed to take everything on his own shoulders and hated asking anyone for help. She knew that he used whiskey as a coping mechanism to try to mute his depression when it began to overwhelm him. He was so far from perfect...but he was perfect for her.

“I don’t want to be special or important,” Max admitted. “All I want is to live a simple, normal life here in Roswell. With you. I just want to be happy.”

"Max...you can't possibly think you're... _ God _ . Noah was a megalomaniac. He was lying to you, manipulating you."

"I don't think he was," Max admitted with a shake of his head. "He had no reason to be lying to me at that moment. He was in complete control. He knew he could do anything he wanted to me. If anything he was lording over me how much more powerful he was than me because of my misguided life choices in burying my powers over the years."

He paused and shook his head, and then looked back up at Liz with a haunted look in his eyes. "Liz, I  _ raised  _ your sister. After a decade of her being  _ dead. _ " He looked down at his calloused, weathered hands. "These hands can control life and death. I decided that Noah should be dead, and now he's dead. And then I decided Rosa should be alive, and she's alive. What more evidence do we need?"

"No." Liz denied as a chill rushed through her. "No, Max. You can't talk like that. You can't believe that." She searched her memory, trying desperately to prove it to him. To convince him that he was more than just what he could do. "Max, remember when we sat down with Michael and Isobel to try to put the pieces of that day together? Both Michael and Isobel were clear about what they saw in you that night. After killing Noah you weren't  _ YOU _ , Max. You were different. Like, no inhibitions, no consequences to your actions. Like…"

"...like a god." Max finished for her.

"No, but that's what I mean, Max. Killing Noah made you feel like you could do anything, but then healing Rosa almost killed you. Like, your body was telling you that you went too far. Would it have done that if you were supposed to be some omnipotent god?"

"So what, you think it was warning me to stop?"

"Maybe." Liz pushed. "Remember what I told you when we first talked about that day together? You need to remember your limitations. And we know where that line is now."

"Right." Max nodded. "And I know that. But, Liz, there's still one thing I don't quite understand. Michael and Isobel were so insistent that I was  _ wrong _ after killing Noah, but you didn't see it. How is that possible?"

"I don't know." Liz admitted. "I've asked myself that same question. You didn't seem off to me that morning. You just seemed… happy. So happy."

Max was looking at her silently, with a thoughtful expression on his face. Then he smiled. “It was you.”

“What?” Liz exclaimed, confused.

“You centered me. Being around you brought me back to myself. It was only after we separated that I started acting erratically again. It’s like, on my own I can’t fully control myself, but with you beside me I stay grounded. It just confirms what I’ve always known. I need you.”

Max shook his head with a wry smile. "You know, I have no idea what the future will bring. I have no idea if my people will be coming for me someday or if we truly have been abandoned here. And frankly, I don't care. All I know is whatever happens, I won't be able to do any of it without you beside me. But I'd like to think that I'm not meant to be alone. We're a team. And we're stronger together."

"Yes, we are." Liz agreed, matter of factly. She stood and smiled, crossing the distance between them and stepping into the space between his legs. Max's hands went straight to her hips, holding her close, as she lightly massaged his tense shoulders. 

She stepped back, clasping his hands and tugging him until he stood.

"Come on, Max. Let's go inside."

"Inside our home," Max replied, and Liz smiled.

"Yeah, Max. It's our home."

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all. 
> 
> Thank you so much for all of your support...for reading and enjoying and all of the kudos and comments. It means the world to me. I hope you enjoyed this little hiatus world and I think we're all in agreement that we can't wait to see how it all plays out in a month and a week or so. 
> 
> Love y'all!!


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